My Days in Court
Travails and Hullabaloos in a University
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
In the year of my doctoral graduation, 1988, I headed for Makurdi and joined the University of Agriculture, Makurdi as a Lecturer, at the instance of Professor Idachaba, who was appointed by the Federal Government of Nigeria as the pioneer Vice Chancellor of the new university. However, during his two-term tenure of eight years, Idachaba faced protracted hostility from the native Tiv elites, who expressed preference for a ‘son of the soil’ chief executive of the university. Nonetheless, he triumphed to put the university on the global intellectual map as a world-class institution, before he left the position in December 1995. My own undoing was the naive decision to stay back at UAM Makurdi; only to face a horrendous transfer of aggression from Idachaba’s adversaries and an extremely horrific persecution by his successor, Professor Erastus Gyang. Gyang had subsequently identified me as a foremost ‘Idachaba boy’ along other endangered staff that he met on ground. We were surreptitiously earmarked to be crushed at all costs and be sacked from the university. As I put up resistance by running incessantly to courts, a hullaballoo engulfed the institution during which Gyang became so embattled, embittered and battered till the end of his tenure of five years. In the aftermath, I triumphed as a plaintiff in ten criminal and civil proceedings that I filed against Gyang and his hatchetmen. Sadly though, aside the psychological stress caused me during the period, and the professional setback that delayed my promotion to the rank of Professor for seven years after the due date, the ensuing crisis also led to a rapid decay of the university that soon diminished its image so badly and almost wiped it out entirely from institutional memory.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
“This book is an upfront, honest documentary of a real life experience of mine. It chronicles the “travails and hullabaloos” I encountered at Makurdi as a university don. What a difficult, often strange period that became, and what a wonderful story to relate at that in the end! Although I did my best to defend myself, repeatedly seeking refuge in the temple of justice, I found plenty of obstacles along the way. By shedding light on these midcareer problems I faced in this memoir, perhaps the aftermath of the situation would become more favourable to me.”
About the Author
Gbolagade Ayoola descended from the royal family of Owus at Orile-Owu in Osun State, Nigeria and has deep ancestral roots in Ibadan, Oyo State, dating back to post-1826 when the allied forces sacked the erstwhile city-state of Owu-Ipole. His great grandfather was Lagbedu, a quintessential warrior and an Olowu of the source, whose progeny also sprouted at Itabaale Olugbode and other locations to become Olubadan at different times in history. Upon their widespread dispersal all over the outside world following a vast conspiratorial plot against the ancient Owu Kingdom in the 19th Century, they have manifested their war fighting traits down the generational lines in the likes of Olusegun Obasanjo, an army General and former President of Nigeria. Thence, there is no naysaying the reality of a warsome blood of the Owus running in the veins of Ayoola, the author of this book who in contemporary times, has chosen the courtroom as a theatre of war to fight it out with the authorities of his workplace, an academic institution outside his own homeland, at which hostility erupted that found him in the eye of the storm for a protracted period; and, much like his ancestors, he survived the hoollabaloos to tell his own story in this memoire, some years afterwards.