Ogbodo: Fashola And The Failed LASU Vision

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IT is mission impossible, although the vision still remains. If Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State had pulled through the stiff opposition to anchor, he would have lifted the state owned university, otherwise known as Lagos State University (LASU), to a standard hitherto unknown. On his mind was a transformation that would replicate either Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Cambridge or any other university in the world that is in that bracket of academic excellence in Lagos, Nigeria.

 But the mission painfully failed and the man earned a B.A (Begin Again) degree for all his efforts. This abysmally poor performance could be attributable to two things. It was either the governor was incapable of the task or he allowed himself to be overwhelmed by a much higher degree called Phd (Pull Him Down) in Nigeria.
   Either way, it amounted to a display of poor strategy. His vision to create an ivy league out of LASU remains impeccable, but it seems he just woke up midnight with the dream, and refused to go back to sleep in order to dream up the correct strategy to achieve that vision. Now, he is down with his fantastic vision having failed on strategy. He has reversed the very process, according to him, that would have taken LASU to the envisaged academic height.
  First, the students and much of the entire LASU community who were the primary beneficiaries of the vision did not understand the direction the governor was headed. He was, therefore, more or less, alone in that epic journey to recreate LASU. For months, the students, tacitly aided by their lecturers, sustained a protest to reverse fees payable in the school, which were astronomically increased from N25,000 to between N198,000 and N350,000 along a value graduation that saw medical science students picking the highest bill and students of arts and the humanities the lowest.
 From when the new fees were announced until the reversal penultimate week, there had never been peace. Even when the governor shifted grounds and met the protesters half way with a 34 per cent and 64 per cent reduction, they had continued until their dramatic victory on August 7. But even in defeat, Fashola managed to reorder his lines and tone to make the capitulation sound very nice and the most honourable thing to do in the circumstance he found himself.
 Hear him: “ I want to appreciate the maturity of our students in the way they went about their agitation for reduction in their school fees. In the course of their protest, I invited them and they responded and we both arrived at a decision where the students submitted a position paper on what they feel should be recommended as fees. We looked at their position papers and the adjustment they recommended and made appropriate reduction of between 34 and 60 per cent.”
  He continued: “But they (students) were not satisfied. They still came back to say the reduction was too high and wanted further reduction.” And then the summersault: “We have therefore looked into their demand, and decided that their school fees must revert to the old rate (N25000) henceforth.”
   In simple description, Governor Fashola could not finish what he had started. All the tough talk about ‘no-going back on the LASU fees increase’ as Late Afro-beat Legend, Fela Anikulapo Kuti would say, was at best sakara and at worst poor strategy.
   It was the second time in about 365 days that Fashola would be pushed by some expediency to go back on his decision. On July 24, 2013, the governor had forcefully taken out about 70 Nigerians of Southeast extraction he felt had no business being in Lagos. He did not reckon with the public outrage that followed the forced deportation of Nigerians within Nigeria and after about 60 days of standing firm on the decision, he crumbled when he stepped out on September 26 to “offer an unreserved apology if the actions taken had been misunderstood.”
   In that particular episode, the governor’s vision was not to punish or lock out persons from a section of the country, but to sanitize Lagos by ensuring that only those who could live in Lagos were helped by the official environment to thrive. Again, he was tall on vision, but the grand vision could not be sustained on the weak strategic framework.
  What others, especially Southeasterners, saw was an Oduduwa irredentist who never wanted Ndigbo in Lagos.
   And we can safely say that the problem of leadership in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world is poor strategy. On the LASU fees for instance, something should have told Fashola that he was placing the cart before the horse. After all, he is a Nigerian living in Nigeria and should understand the disposition of a people who have persistently suffered leadership abuse to the extent that they now have greater confidence in the devil than  their leaders.
   In 1999 when this democracy started, the pump price of petrol was N20. Official argument for the systematic increase of the per litre cost of fuel, which stands at N97 today, had been the need for government to create more resources to deliver services to the people. When the cost of petrol was three kobo in 1977, Nigerians enjoyed almost constant electricity supply. Over 37 years that is, between 1977 and 2014, the pump price has been increased by about 3233 per cent. This has not translated to a corresponding leap in the volume of social services and other functions of government to the people.
  I am saying that in Nigeria, there is hardly a correlation between taxation or the size of government revenue and the volume of social services delivered by government. And it explains why, each campaign for pump price increases has been met by civil resistance because the people do not believe in the declared intentions of government. This perception has not changed and government is even committing more evil to deepen the despondency. For instance, investment in infrastructure to improve supply has been constantly cited for the unending increase in electricity tariffs. Yet, nothing significant has changed in public electricity in spite of the increases.
  Altogether, the ways of government in Nigeria are just a shade better than open robbery. Fashola should have interpreted the stiff resistance to the increase in fees in the state owned university in this context. That way, he would have thought of other ways, like even borrowing, to transform LASU and then come back to the people to demand pay back. Nigerians will always pay for good things because the same Nigerians pay billions of naira yearly  to keep their wards in good schools outside the country.
  What Fashola was doing was akin to a restaurant operator asking people to pay ahead for their food so that she could go to the market to get good stuff for a good meal before those that paid could eat. It does not happen that way. People will pay for quality food if it is put on the table and they can see it and those less able to pay shall step down naturally to a lower table.
  This is the strategy that I am talking about. Fashola could have borrowed to cook a good food at LASU and those with taste will pay a competitive price to have a chunk. Now, the vision is rested because the governor adopted the wrong strategy of pay before cooking.
   We are talking of LASU, remember also that Alhaji Lateef Jakande built and ran free for all and sundry. To move the people from this mentality of free lunch, Fashola must show reason why the lunch should be paid for. Nigerians are not that poor; President Goodluck Jonathan himself said so. They will only insist on value for their money.  Obviously, it is getting too late for Fashola to reinvent the strategy regarding LASU. In fact, he may have completely capitulated even on a number of other things for what some people attribute to considerations for 2015 and the need to keep Lagos safe within the household of the All Progressives Party (APC).
  I do not know about that anyway. I want to stay with the sole argument that reformers, including Fashola, should place higher premium on  greater attention to strategy than vision. The latter defines the destination while the former lays the concrete steps to that destination.

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