TANTALISING GLIMPSES OF THE IVORY TOWER

By Omoseye Bolaji

The South African academic, Dr Somadoda Fikeni (pictured above) is a top-notch intellectual I enjoy watching whenever he is on TV analysing political issues with elan. He has an extraordinary ambience of gravitas, which complemented with his suavity and excellent diction adorns him with a special aura.

I can not make great claims that I know much about this gentleman, but just listening to him intermittently on air one becomes somewhat entranced. Even without being told, one ineluctably has the distinct conviction that this is a man of distinction and erudition, a man who would have churned out world class books in his field.

And, voila! This is indeed the case. The good Doctor – or/and Professor – is the author of massive analytical, painstaking books like Conflict and Accommodation: The Politics of Rural Local Government, and Exile and Return: The Politics of Namibia’s “returnees”

Somehow, when I see Fikeni on air, my mind goes back to a few decades ago back in Nigeria when as a youngster I used to see another eminent academic, Dr Ben Elugbe on TV analysing football with awesome proficiency. As kids we marvelled at his knowledge and skilled delivery – on football. Somehow we could not get to grips with his already considerable pedigree as an academic.

It was only later on that one would learn that Elugbe is a renowned academic in his own field (linguistics?), a man who has published the usual awe-inspiring works – like his “thick” book, A comparative Edo phonology, Comparative Edoid: Phonology and Lexicon; and Nigerian Pidgin: Background and Prospects.

It does appear that academics, though respected prodigiously in their own niche, seem not to belong to the “ordinary” world, it is as if the “Ivory Tower” is where they should be ensconced; as if they are rather unreal and ethereal; that the works they produce can only be appreciated by a removed, restricted, cerebral audience. This is a perception which continues to persist, even among so-called mainstream writers and public “performance poets”

At this juncture, let us throw in the names of two great, world class African writers; one a Nigerian, one a South African. Both academics. Nigeria’s Isidore Okpewho is an outstanding writer who has produced scintillating works. But how many “ordinary readers” know about him or his works, including his fiction? The same applies to South Africa’s Zoe Wicomb (“coloured”) a woman whose writing skill is easily one of the best in the world. Yet this duo seems inextricably submerged into the world of academia and one would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of ordinary, mainstream readers familiar with their published works. And I must also mention the polished, superb (also an academic) female writer, Menan Du Plessis, author of stunning books like A State of Fear and Longlive…

A few years ago, I met an incredibly modest, quite young woman (incidentally white) at a conference. Whilst other mediocre participants were making their presence felt volubly, she was mouse-like, funereally quiet, as if it was incongruous that she should be at the occasion. But nevertheless, I had the feeling that she was an immense intellect and managed to share a few words with her.

“I am sure you have published a lot of quality stuff. You are an academic,” I said to her. Deprecatingly, she admitted that yes, she had published some “weak stuff. Nothing much,” Books? Shuffling of feet. “Just one…a small book…”

Subsequent research on my part soon elicited the fact that this lady had indeed published a book; and the “small book” she had published in her field was over 300 pages long! In my mind (I won’t publish her name here) she strikes me as a quintessential academic, exceedingly modest yet already top-notch.

Since academics always aim for the skies, and are so painstaking that it is not easy for them to become part of the warp and weft of the mainstream, I suppose that is what makes the achievements of writers like Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o more astonishing. They were (Ngugi still is) academics for many decades yet most of their published works are generally accessible to virtually everybody.

Ah, the lofty academics…