Nigerian United States-based professor and newspaper columnist, Farooq Kperogi, has advised against renaming Nigeria-owned universities after living or deceased politicians, stressing that such a trend is historically, politically, and emotionally problematic.
The Professor of Communication at Kennesaw State University in Greater Atlanta, United States, made this known on Saturday through his ‘Notes from Atlanta’ column article titled ‘Why we should stop renaming well-established universities’.
Professor Kperogi’s intervention was necessitated by the recent renaming of the University of Maiduguri to Muhammadu Buhari University, after the immediate past Nigerian president, who died a few weeks ago.
Expressing his stance on the matter, the don stated that if this trend of changing the names of every Nigerian university that derives its name from its location continues, they will sooner or later be renamed after a dead or living politician.
“Seriously, we need to have an honest, soul-searching national conversation about the violent disrespect for institutional identity that the abrupt, top-down renaming of well-established universities represents,” he stated.
The don noted that people in government may not know that universities are repositories of tradition, intellectual heritage, and regional identity that represent knowledge and universal values, not the legacy of an individual whose contributions to society may be narrow, contested, or politically motivated.
Kperogi further noted that renaming well-established universities after politicians also risks turning the universities into political monuments, mere tools for political patronage or historical revisionism, which robs them of their neutral identity as centres of learning and research.
The don, however, stated that, sometimes, certain factors could warrant the change of name of a university, but that most well-established universities that changed their names did so within the first few years of their existence, like, according to him, Harvard University and Yale University in the US.
“Renaming universities that already have a healthy, time-honoured institutional profile also creates branding anarchy. That is why students, lecturers, and graduates of the University of Maiduguri are appealing to President Bola Tinubu to reverse his renaming of their university after the late Muhammadu Buhari,” he stated.
To buttress his stance and displeasure on the matter, the don recalled how the University of Abuja was arbitrarily renamed Yakubu Gowon University, and also how the students, staff, and alumni of the University of Lagos resisted the renaming of their school to Moshood Abiola University.
Kperogi stated that stakeholders of universities, including the host communities, often feel a deep emotional and symbolic attachment to the name of their university, adding that a top-down renaming can come across as insensitive and can ignite deep resentment.
“If we must honour our heroes, let us do so in ways that elevate without erasing, that celebrate without displacing, and that remember without rewriting,” added.
