By Kenneth Azaigba
A great university is not measured by buildings or rhetoric. It is often a product of invisible lineage that thrives on intellectual genealogy. Mentorship is an imperative. Without it, the Ivory Tower sinks.
I have noticed a worrying trend particularly in Nigerian academia. We have brilliant researchers but weak academic lineages; many supervisors, few mentors; many mentees chasing titles but few willing to be guided.
True mentorship, in the tradition of Socrates-Plato-Aristotle, is a deliberate, long-term investment of a Senior scholar in the intellectual, ethical and professional formation of a junior scholar.
There are at least three core pillars of effective mentorship in the Ivory Tower that must be given due attention if we must build a strong university system. I itemize them as follows:
a) Intellectual Mentoring: Teaching a Mentee how to think, not just what to write. This means reading drafts critically, co-authoring responsibly, inviting them to conferences, and challenging their arguments. For instance, the great Ibadan History School survived because Kenneth Dike mentored Ade Ajayi, who mentored Obaro Ikime, who mentored Tekena Tamuno. That is a chain of over 60 years. Where is our chain today?
b) Professional Mentoring: This implies showing the Mentee the invisible curriculum. By this, I mean how to write a fund-able proposal, how to respond to a reviewer and how to balance teaching, research and community service.
c) Ethical and Psychosocial Mentoring: The Ivory Tower can be politically treacherous. A mentor protects his mentee from unnecessary battles, teaches emotional intelligence, models humility in success and grace in failure, and demonstrates that character outlast citation index. Warns mentees against unripe chase after administrative positions (HOD, Dean, Director).
It is important to also state that mentorship is a two-way lane. Mentees must be teachable, submit to be mentored. You cannot be mentored if you believe you already know. A Mentee must be loyal, not sycophantic or a praise-singer. Very importantly, the best tribute to a mentor is to surpass him. Prof. Ade Ajayi students did not become Ajayi copies; they became giants in their own right. And there are many examples to point at.
My summary point is that universities do not become great because of TETFUND grants alone. More importantly, they rise because one generation decides that the next generation must be better. The question every Professor must ask is not “how many papers have I published?” but “Whom have I raised who can replace me and do better? ” And every young scholar must ask; Who is my mentor?; Whose intellectual lineage am I carrying, am I worthy of it? It is pertinent to restore the culture of genuine mentorship in Nigerian Universities so that it will not only rise in rankings but also in quality scholarship. For as Prof. MK Othman (My VC) notes; Nigerian Universities are “the bedrock pillar of societal development, the breeding ground for tomorrow’s leaders, the epicenter of integrating hypothesis and empirical concepts, a meeting point of theory and practical reality, and a home for creativity and innovation…”
We must therefore reinvent the Mentor -Mentee Relations of the past to ground the Ivory Tower on sound footing.
Prof. Kenneth Azaigba, Dept. of History & Strategic Studies, Federal University Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State.
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