Brief Introduction:
Professor Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba is a Kenyan lawyer, academic, and Pan-Africanist known across the continent for his fiery oratory and uncompromising advocacy for African unity, self-reliance, and ethical leadership. A former Director of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission and former Director of the Kenya School of Law, Prof Lumumba is the founder of the P.L.O. Lumumba Foundation has delivered lectures in over 40 African countries. He is widely regarded as one of Africa’s leading public intellectuals on governance, education, and the continent’s place in the 21st century.
He delivered this lecture at the Silver Jubilee Anniversary of Nasarawa State University, Keffi, on the theme “Reimagining Africa in the 21st Century: The Role of Universities.”
FULL TEXT:
_ALL PROTOCOLS DULY OBSERVED:_
I am happy to be in this Assembly on the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of the Nasarawa State University here in Keffi.
I have had the advantage of listening to the submissions of the Silver Jubilee Lecturer, Dr Umar Buba Bindir. I have had the advantage of listening to the remarks of His Royal Majesty – The Emir of Keffi and Chancellor of this great University, Dr Shehu Chindo Yamusa II, and the remarks of the Governor, Engineer AA Sule. It would have been easier for me to say that I associate myself with their submissions, and that I do not have anything useful to add. But I believe I have something useful to add.
Before I continue, it will be a mistake on my part not to recognise the High Commissioner of my country, Kenya, before this Assembly, as well as the President of the Republic of Tanzania and the Ambassador who is here.
For the Afro-pessimists, their tendency is to engage in lamentation. Their tendency is to bite their fingers. Their tendency is to identify the fault, with the attendant consequences today. So, there are Afro-pessimists who are professional fault finders. I am not one of those.
I am one who believes that Africa has had a glorious past. That Africa is a continent that has contributed immensely to the world. That Africa is a continent that is significant to human civilization. And that if there have been hiccups, those hiccups should only serve to remind us that there is work to be done, and that you and I are the ones who would do it. Hence the topic of Reimagining.
Many years ago, a great African was asked: what will it take for Africa to regain our status in the world? We are the super men and super women that must do our bidding in order for Africa to regain her pride of place in the world.
I can remember many years ago when Africa had not been victimised in the manner that disrupted us. Africa was great. Africa traded with other civilizations during the common era. At the risk of being accused of romanticizing Africa’s past, history teaches me that the Greeks were present in Africa. When they talk about their universities, when they talk about their mathematics, they were present in Africa. There must have been universities in Africa where they came to.
It is not lost on me that there is not a single significant figure in the history of the rest of the world who did not spend time on the continent of Africa. When you look at the Greeks and they talk about Moses, he was in Egypt. When you talk about the Prophet Muhammad, he was on the continent. And when you talk about Christ, he was in Africa. There was something that was happening on the continent of Africa. We may not have called those institutions universities, but they were universities.
When one looks at the pyramids, and the pyramids that you are familiar with are only the pyramids in Egypt, but did you know that there are more pyramids in Sudan than there are in Egypt? And do you know that the technology that defined the building of the pyramids still confounds the world today? There must have been universities where they taught architecture on the continent of Africa.
When you read the great African thinkers and historians such as Cheikh Anta Diop of Senegal, he tells us that long before the European astronomers talked about the stars, in Mali they had already discovered the stars that are being talked about today. I dare say that universities existed on the continent of Africa.
Those of you who are here in the Federal Republic of Nigeria know very well that the walls of Benin were longer than the Great Wall of China. There must have been architecture here on the continent of Africa. Those of you who are familiar with the kingdom of Great Zimbabwe, in present day Zimbabwe, will know that there were great buildings and constructions in that part of the world.
That is why it is necessary that you understand why we have been told to reimagine. Because you can only reimagine when there was imagining in the first place. Not to imagine imagining and reimagining, because Africa was then disrupted many times.
When I read the history of the explorers of old, I read many of them. In the year 1482, history teaches me that when a Portuguese explorer went into the coast of Ghana in what is now Elmina, he found civilizations that were going on. When he wrote back to his emperor, he said, they have great mines here, and that is why they called it Elmina, because there were mines. We were mining before they came.
There were universities in Timbuktu before they came. There were universities in Mali before they came, elsewhere in Africa, before they came. And we were disrupted. When we were disrupted, many of us were taken to different parts of the world. And when you hear Europe talking about their civilization, Africans contributed to that civilization. When you hear the Americans talk about their civilization, Africans contributed to that civilization. When you hear the Chinese talk about their civilization and the Arabs talk about their civilization, Africans contributed to those civilizations. But we were disrupted.
Africa, like the mother continent that she is, is a welcoming continent. We are the only continent in the world that still gives meaning to these immortal words: that you shall be thy brother’s and thy sister’s keeper. Unfortunately, whenever we have kept our brothers and sisters from other civilizations, they abused us and insulted us.
They insulted us through slavery. They thought we would disappear, but we have refused to disappear. They came, and they started colonization. The European powers sat in Berlin from 1884 to 1885. They divided the continent of Africa into little pieces. No logic, no rationalisation. They simply took rulers and created the 54 countries that we have today.
They were here. They had their spheres of influence. The Germans were here, and when they were here, they created institutions after their own. The French were here, and they created institutions in their own image. The Belgians were here, and they created institutions in their own image. The Italians were here, and they created institutions in their own image. The Portuguese were here. The English were here. They were here.
If they did not change our names, they changed our laws. Once they had changed our names and changed our laws, they also created institutions. And they said that our form of education was not education at all. They came here, and even the things that we knew they discovered. They discovered lakes, which we had lived next to for many years. They discovered mountains. They even discovered us.
When they came here, and they had succeeded in confusing us, they left us with a form of education whose main agenda was to create individuals who would serve the mother country. So it became that if you are a university student, your intelligence was measured on the basis of your ability to speak a foreign language. No matter how intelligent you are, you are not considered intelligent. You have to speak English.
You could speak all the languages, but if you did not speak Portuguese, you are not intelligent. And somehow we, too, believed that our ability to speak in foreign languages defined how intelligent we were. I remember those days, and those days are not to be spoken of in the past. If you were colonised by the British, the only time that you thought you had gone to school well was when you had gone to Oxford or London or Cambridge. Even if you attended a course for one week, you would come back and say, I am an alumnus of Oxford, notwithstanding that you had spent eight years at the University of Ibadan. The same with the French.
That is why, therefore, when we are celebrating 25 years of Nasarawa State University, and we are talking about the African Renaissance, we must ask ourselves: what kind of education? What is the education about? Education for whom? Education for whose benefit?
In 1933, an African American, Carter G. Woodson, wrote a book, which I commend to all students: _The Miseducation of the Negro_. I am daring to say that for a long time, we in the mother continent have been misreaducated. The time is now for us to re-educate ourselves. When we are re-educating ourselves, that is what we call the African Renaissance.
There can only be a renaissance when there was a great past. There was a great past here in Africa. There was a time when this continent could feed us. There was a time when this continent could produce our own medicine. There was a time when this continent had men and women who could travel across the continent and trade. There was a time when this continent had our institutions. There was a time when this continent could do many things in our own right.
There was a time when this continent did not divide us up. There was a time when this continent was together as one, so that I could move across this continent without visas. Such a time is not today. We are in a beauty parade of sovereignty: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. For some reason we emphasise the things that divide us rather than the things that unite us.
As we talk about African Renaissance, I am asking all of us that this is the time that we must ask ourselves what it is that we must do at universities. Why is it, on this African continent, when we talk about the things that should unite us, why is it, as the engineer said a little earlier, that we do not do things that serve us well? Let us begin to look at some of the things that we can do for ourselves.
When I think about this continent, and I think about how during the period when the continent was struggling to regain our independence, our founding fathers here in Nigeria, I can still read and hear the speeches of great Nigerians such as Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sir Ahmadu Bello, and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, all of blessed memory. I can still hear them talk about the value of education. I can stillDr.ear them in Ghana talk about education.
Today, when we travel across Nigeria, we see their names immortalised in universities. But the question is, have those universities made the contribution that we want to be made? Are our universities giving us the food that we want to eat? Are our universities, through research, ensuring that we have the medicine that we need?
Are our universities ensuring that the minerals that lie under the belly of our earth are mined in a manner that is beneficial to the continent of Africa? Are our universities ensuring that the oil and the gas that we produce are for the benefit of the continent of Africa? Are our universities making efforts towards ensuring that the clothes that cover our nakedness are made in the continent of Africa?
Do Nigerians know that you spend 4 billion United States dollars to import clothes? Do Kenyans know that we are the largest importer of second-hand discarded clothes by Europeans and Americans? How come the continent of Africa continues to consume that which has been rejected by other civilizations?
The time is now to think about the African Renaissance. When we think about the African Renaissance, we cannot do so in the absence of universities. The universities are the incubators of our best minds. Our young men and women go through education. They come to the universities. They study engineering, as the professor and the doctor said a little earlier.
We produce engineers out of the 300 plus universities in Nigeria. But it is always the Chinese, yes, they are our friends, why is it that they are the ones who come to make our roads? Why is it that it is Europe and America that still produce the lifts that we use in our buildings? What happened to our engineers and our engineering?
Why is it that when some of us are sick, and we have no shortage of doctors in our universities and in our hospitals, we have as many health refugees in China, in India, in Germany? Why do we not have faith in ourselves? How is it, and why is it, that when we have joined institutions in government, our students, we do not want them to come to our universities?
It is a point of joy and celebration when we sit at such a gathering to say my son is in the United States of America, my son is in the United Kingdom, my son is in Germany, my son is a student of Oxford University. The time is now for this to change. I am suggesting to us, the _why_ questions must be answered, and can only be answered if we cast our minds on those things that unite us, rather than those that divide us.
We Africans must have faith in ourselves. The day we believe that we can do things like others, that is the day when the airplanes that we fly will be airplanes made in Nigeria. That is the day that the cars that we drive shall be made in Morocco. That is the day that the medicine that we consume when we are sick is made in Mauritania. That is the day when the watches we wear will be made in the Republic of Benin.
I look forward to those days. I look forward to those days because the history of Nasarawa State University has taken only 25 years. It tells me that it can be done. But that which can be done is not done until it is done. So we must do it.
It is our duty, therefore, as we reimagine the continent of Africa. And remember, we are reimagining the continent of Africa in the 21st Century. The 21st century is the century of the Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions. It is the century of the Internet of Things. It is the century of Artificial Intelligence. It is the century of things that are done with the mind.
The question is, are we participants in the Fourth Industrial Revolution? The question is, is our university, Nasarawa State University, here in the forefront of invention and innovation? The question is, when we are talking about communication, are we consumers, or are we creators?
When we talk about social media, when we talk about Instagram, are they made in Nigeria? When we talk about Signal, when we talk about WhatsApp, when we talk about Google, are they made anywhere on the continent of Africa? No. When we talk about the mobile phone, how can it be that Artificial Intelligence is consumed by us, and the things that are enabling Artificial Intelligence are found here?
His Excellency, the Governor, told us that the State of Nasarawa is now in the business of adding value to lithium. Do we recall that lithium is one of the enablers of what we consume in Artificial Intelligence? If we know that that is the case, the question is, as we reimagine the continent of Africa in the 21st Century, what is the connectivity and the connection between the university and industry? Are we connected in a manner that enables us to produce?
Many years ago, here in Nigeria, in the 1980s, Africans actually posed the question that I am posing. Africans recognised that we must trade amongst ourselves. Between 1980 and 1991 we did not trade amongst ourselves. We met ourselves again, and we came up with the Abuja Treaty, and we started with trade amongst ourselves.
During that period, we also promised ourselves, if we were not promising ourselves in ECOWAS, that we would harmonise education. We were promising ourselves in the East African Community, that we would harmonise our education. If we were not promising ourselves in East Africa, we were doing so in the Maghreb and in Central Africa.
The question is, have we harmonised our education systems? Is it the case that today, if I am a doctor trained in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I can practice in the Republic of South Africa without any question? If I am an engineer trained in Nigeria, can I practice in Kenya without any question? If I am a lawyer trained in Kenya, if I am a pharmacist and I am trained in Mauritania, can I practice in Egypt?
These are the questions that we must ask ourselves. Because in that period, when Africa has been making declarations after declaration, the Europeans, the 27 of them, have succeeded in harmonising their education system. When you hear them talking about Erasmus II, it means there was an Erasmus I, and it enables you to move from one country to the other among the 27 countries.
I look forward to the day when our universities will be in a position to do that. Then we will be reimagining the continent of Africa in the 21st century. Young men who are present here, old men and women who are present here, this is a matter that knows no age. It is a matter that only requires that we organise ourselves.
Permit me to allow my mind to be fertile with imagination, because I have been asked to reimagine what Africa should do. I imagine, and what role do I think the universities can play in that reimagination, particularly today, as we celebrate the Silver Anniversary of Nasarawa State University. This is what I imagine.
I imagine that sooner rather than later, universities in Africa will begin to work together. I imagine that working together will include, among other things, that there will be collaboration in research in different areas. I look forward to the day when this university here at Keffi, Nasarawa State, will collaborate with universities in South Africa, in Kenya, in East Africa, in Morocco, in the Maghreb, and in different parts of Africa.
Their research and development will be for the purpose not of simply producing degree holders, but the purpose of producing thinkers whose claim to fame is that they invent things. I look forward to those days.
I look forward to the day when our universities here in Nigeria, led by the Nasarawa State University here in Keffi, will be a university which will have connectivity with industry. That when we have industries in Lafia, or whether those industries are in Maiduguri or in Kano, or they are outside of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, that there will be research and development, and that they will be patented, and that there will be commercialisation.
The next time I am invited here, when I go to a hotel, the television I will be watching will be made in Kaduna, not made in Korea. I look forward to it, because when I am invited for lunch, and I am called upon to consume rice, invariably, it will be rice that is produced here in Nasarawa. When I go to Ghana, it will be rice from Nasarawa. It will not be the case that when I go to Kenya, rice is being imported from Pakistan or other parts of the world.
I believe that that idea will come from the Faculty of Agriculture here at the Nasarawa State University. I look forward to those days. I look forward to the day when we will produce university students in agriculture who are able to interact not with the cows that the good engineer called “athletic cows,” but cows that can produce milk.
I was told by a friend of mine at one time that today, in a number of African universities, sometimes we have graduates of agriculture. Of course, this was not true, but he was making his point. He said, we now have university graduates in agriculture who cannot tell the difference between a goat and a sheep, and who cannot tell the difference between a donkey and a horse, and cannot tell the difference between a camel and a horse. Of course, he was only making a point.
But one point he was making is that we want students of agriculture who are practical and who are going to ensure that Africa feeds herself. I look forward to the university being present in the villages.
Many times when I travel across the continent of Africa, and I do, and I look at some of the things that are happening in the mother continent, I remind myself that our universities must be the game changers. How will universities change the game? Universities will only change the game when our professors are enabled.
In many of our universities, we desire, we want to generate funds, we want to have endowment funds. We want to have money for research and development. We want to do the things that are done in Europe and America. We want to charge fees to be able to raise the funds to do all these, but then the politicians tell us, no, you cannot do it.
We look forward to the day when the African politicians, in helping us, will enable us. If they enable us in the manner that we desire, our universities will not only be better universities, but producing universities. I have no doubt in my mind that it can be achieved and that it must be achieved in our lifetime.
Ladies and gentlemen, on matters such as these, where submissions have been made, and made effectively, wisdom only requires two things: that you do not speak for too long, and you conclude sooner rather than later, because what ought to be said has been said.
I am therefore now engaging the final overdrive gear, and that gear tells me only the following things: What therefore lies for Africa in the 21st Century? We are now in the 26th year of the 21st Century, which means the first quarter of the 21st Century is over. If that is the case, what role will universities play, and must universities play?
Africa sat in the year 2015 and they came up with a document, the Africa Agenda 2063. When you read Africa Agenda 2063, these are the promises that we make to ourselves. We tell ourselves that we shall be an industrialised Africa. We tell ourselves that Africa will be manufacturing. We tell ourselves that Africa will be adding value to our resources.
The question is, will the University of Nasarawa be involved in producing the men and women that will help us in industrialisation, so that we can be part of the Industrial Revolution? I am telling African universities as I stand here in Nasarawa, that is what we must do.
We are also asking ourselves that in order to be participants in the spirit of Africa Agenda 2063, we must embrace technology. In order to embrace technology, it is incumbent upon us to have power, to generate power. I am aware, as the governor said, in Nigeria, you generate no more than 5,000 megawatts. In Kenya, we generate no more than 5,000 megawatts. In many African countries, we generate less than 1,000 megawatts.
The little island of South Korea generates more electricity than all Sub-Saharan Africa combined. I am now saying that Nasarawa State University must be the place where we are talking about new and renewable energy. I am saying that that is the role that the university must play.
When I think about that, and I also think about feeding ourselves, historians and others tell us: if you cannot feed yourself, you will always be humiliated by other civilizations. Africa is still a net importer of food. I am suggesting that the universities must be involved in the process of creating the know-how that will ensure that we can produce enough beef, that we can produce enough rice, that we can produce enough to feed ourselves. Because it is only when we feed ourselves that we shall have the confidence to confront the world.
I have no doubt in my mind that when Africa Agenda 2063 is wedded with the Africa Continental Free Trade Area, and all the universities are involved in knowledge incubation and production, our university graduates will no longer be mere holders of certificates, but they will be doers. They will go out into the world and do what Africa requires.
So my charge to you today, here at Nasarawa: you students who are present here, I want us to take a solemn vow. The vow is that when we leave here, if you are a student of law, go out there and ask yourself, what kind of law are you learning, and how effective will it be in creating peace and justice on the continent of Africa?
When you are here and you are a student of engineering, I am asking you to go out there and remember that your duty as a student of engineering is not to recite theories, but to be in a position to invent and to innovate.
If you are a student of pharmacy, I am asking you to go out there and be in a position to tell me that you will be in the forefront of making the vaccines that will help the continent of Africa. I am telling you that it can be done. It must be done. And it is you who are going to do it.
As I conclude, I remember these words, the words that I am speaking were words spoken on the 29th day of November, 1961, in Ghana, in Kumasi, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. This is what Kwame Nkrumah said: “The concept of a university as an Ivory Tower is dead, and may it rest in peace.”
I am now saying here in Nasarawa that the concept of the university as an Ivory Tower is dead and may it rest in eternal peace.