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The University of Nigeria, Nsukka and the Making of Post-Independence Nigeria

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The University of Nigeria, Nsukka and the Making of Post-Independence Nigeria “THE UNIVERSITY OF THE VILLAGE”: THE UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA AND THE MAKING OF POST-INDEPENDENCE NIGERIA By Russell Wade Stevenson A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of History—Doctor of Philosophy 2020 ABSTRACT “THE UNIVERSITY OF THE VILLAGE”: THE UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA AND THE MAKING OF POST-INDEPENDENCE NIGERIA By Russell Wade Stevenson This dissertation examines the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN, the first indigenous university in Nigeria and the first land grant university in Africa. This dissertation argues that UNN represented an innovative experiment in African higher education by expanding higher education to the general populace rather than the colonially privileged elite. However, its construction drew upon patronage politics and taxation regimes that expropriated funding at the same time other regions faced education taxes. Resistance to the University’s construction reflected local sentiments of inequitable distribution of tax resources throughout Nigeria’s Eastern Region. The University also served as a mechanism in post-independence Nigerian geopolitics: as a mechanism for removing the influence of the British-established University College, Ibadan and British educational models more generally. The University of Nigeria, Nsukka would be, as Taiye Selasi and Achille Mbembe have phrased it, an “Afro-politan” institution—porous and all-encompassing of knowledge systems throughout the globe. During the Nigeria-Biafra war, UNN faced sustained wartime damage—damage from it could not easily recover. The Nigeria-Biafra war laid the groundwork for a period of sustained infrastructural decay and internal resistance, even as the Nigerian federal government enjoyed larger access to oil revenue. This dissertation examines what makes African institutions “indigenous” and how UNN represented the halting transformation from coloniality to indigeneity in the post- independence Nigerian nation-state. To the people of Nsukka. Ka Chukwu gozie unu. Ka Chukwu gozie ezi na ulo unu ogbu ruo mgbe ogbo. Ka unu nwe udo, akụ na ụba. Ka ozi Nsukka bigede ruo mgbe ọtụtụ ogbo. Ka Ozi Nsukka nye ndi uwa ìhè. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS An Igbo saying holds, Ejighi Igbo Agwa Onye Ocha: You cannot explain Igbo to a white person. The saying serves as a kind of verbalized punctuation mark, a rhetorical flourish to highlight the inner life of Igbo society that needs no explanation and by implication, that Ndi Ocha cannot possibly explain. Or, as Jack Johnson observes in his song, “The News”: “It’s all understood.” My efforts to understand the history of the University engage this reality: that certain things must be spoken in order to be acknowledged. This dissertation has been through a winding road: through two major diseases, ongoing financial duress, and a global pandemic that has rendered much of my archival collections inaccessible to the public. The story of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka is a story of the soaring heights of Africa’s independence age—an era when Africans could, it was hoped, live on their own terms with their own institutions, challenging the Western naysayers who looked upon African independence with a mixture of condescension and dread. For the intellectual elite, the idea of an African university administered by Africans with an African imprimatur on its degrees struck them either as an obscenity or a farce. The planners of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka challenged prevailing wisdom, making an institution that seemed to exemplify a self-governing African country committing to crafting its own future, on its own terms. It was a radical exertion of agency and control. This dissertation is a memorial to that university, in both its splendor and its duress. Scholars often refer to their written work in paternal terms, as a child reared through nurturing and care. My scholarship deserves no such lofty distinction. It consists of a 400-page long exploration of a specific subject, the history of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, that iv might offer a little insight to the world—nothing more, nothing less. The capacity for a single human life, even those of the lowliest station, to effect good for humanity transcends any potential impact this dissertation will have on the course of human affairs. The typical shopkeeper or mechanic—the sort standing alongside the road when our vehicle blew out a tire en route to Enugu—enjoys a greater capacity to affect everyday lives. But we do not enjoy the capacity to dictate the fulness of the terms under which we live. We live in an ongoing dialogue with the will of the chi, winning some negotiations while surrendering others. The ways that we are best suited to contribute to our communities tend to be found in rather conventional methods. Grandeur may be in the offing, but I find that my best efforts at contributing come through embracing those circumstances in which we find ourselves; a life lived in the offing is a life less lived. This dissertation, then, reflects my modest effort to challenge prevailing Western assumptions—that Nigeria is nothing more than a teeming morass of day-to-day hustlers and scammers. This dissertation seeks to highlight the fundamentally intellectual nature of modern Nigeria—that it is a place rooted in ideas, aspirations, and intellectual syncretism. For all the anxieties about the independence era expressed by scholars such as Chinua Achebe and John Oriji, Nigeria is, as Chinua Achebe observes, a “nation favoured by Providence” well-equipped to “facilitate mankind’s advancement.”1 An army of researchers, both hired and volunteer, have supported this dissertation along the way. An Igbo proverb holds: Ora na-azu nwa (“Groups raise children”). I managed a team of six researchers in both the United States and Nigeria culling archives throughout the world for documentation. The research sites included: Logan, Utah; Morgantown, West Virginia; College 1 Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria (Portsmouth, NH. Heinemann, 1984), 2. v Park, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; East Lansing, Michigan; Chicago, Illinois; London, United Kingdom; The Hague, Netherlands; and Ibadan, Enugu, Nsukka, Calabar, and Asaba, Nigeria. While this dissertation may have a limited impact, its need for collective care has been no pressing for it. On every page, the work of invisible labor has left its stamp. Sherilyn Fuhriman has done the work of many, culling documentation from the Utah State University Merrill-Cazier archives, transcribing long interviews, and applying her editorial eye. To say her contributions have been instrumental would be to indulge in high absurdity. She has gone above and beyond her wages—and with a generally unknown vibrancy of spirit, even after the project would have grown old and stale for observers far less committed to the idea of Nsukka than she has been. Others have helped along the way, as well. in Charlsetown, West Virginia, Kimberly Konkel collected vital records regarding Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe’s arrival to Storer College. At Michigan State University’s library, Kathleen Weessies worked doggedly to procure a contemporaneous map of Nigeria, going well beyond her required obligations. I thank her for her contribution to the project. For a dissertation to pay honors to the dissertation chair is a given. But Dr. Nwando Achebe has been singular in her contributions to and support for this dissertation. In her commitment to the idea of Nsukka, she has been unwavering—an exemplar of the commitment to engaging indigenous African institutions on their own terms. Above all, I acknowledge the presence of my older brother, Stewart, who passed away as a one-day-old infant 40 years ago this month. Had he lived, he might have been my mother’s last child. I live with his presence and remember the short life he lived as the scaffolding for my own life. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………...viii LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………...ix KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS………………………………………………………xi INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER 1………………………………………………………………………...62 CHAPTER 2………………………………………………………………………...82 CHAPTER 3…………………………………………………………………….....140 CHAPTER 4……………………………………………………………………….191 CHAPTER 5……………………………………………………………………….265 CHAPTER 6……………………………………………………………………….348 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………438 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………446 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Gender distribution of UNN students, 1963-1964. From George Johnson, “The University of Nigeria” (1964).......…………………………………………....290 Table 2: Regional distribution of UNN students, 1963-1964. From George Johnson, “The University of Nigeria” (1964)...…………………………………………. …..290 Table 3: Disciplinary distribution of UNN students, 1963-1964. From George Johnson, “The University of Nigeria” (1964). ……………………………………..304 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Map of Nigeria’s Regions (Northern, Western, and Eastern), 1959 Courtesy of University of Minnesota Library……..............................................................1 Figure 2: Cover to William Thayer, From Log Cabin to White House, 1920………….103 Figure 3: Marcus Mosiah Garvey, 1922. Courtesy of New York Public Library……...106 Figure 4: Pittsburgh, 1927. Courtesy of University of Pittsburgh Special Collections...121 Figure 5: Howard University, mid-20th-century. Courtesy of Theodor Horydczak Collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division………………………………............................................................................126
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