Students walk outside the Moi University administration block in Kesses, Uasin Gishu County on February 8, 2024.
A brief while ago, an electrifying epiphany alighted upon global consciousness by way of a notorious almanac instigating disparate experiences on the affective register ranging, depending on affiliation and ambition, from smugness and pride, to diffidence and shame.
On one hand, the global university rankings affirmed the unrelenting stranglehold of the usual suspects on the top ten global spots.
On the other hand, local universities could only redeem their miniscule stature by curating a continental tournament in which they could also be said to dominate the highest positions.
This is the ludicrous implication of the ‘sub-Saharan Africa’ frame of analysis. In a world where the most competitive entities persistently incur monumental expenditures and turn on their best performance, we are happy to be ranked for subsisting at the most rudimentary degree of functionality.
Our professionals have made a cottage industry of hewing out meaningless categories in order to evade the excruciating horror of exposure in global rankings, while at the same time revelling in the dubious affirmation of counterfeit glory.
In this sense, ‘Africa south of the Sahara and north of the Limpopo’ could be said to be a continental River Road, a district reputed to be such delinquent transactional proficient that, for a small consideration, anyone can be certified to be, or have anything whatsoever that they wish.
Whatever the case, two Kenyan universities appeared in continental rankings, with one turning up in the top 10, even though globally, it was reported to be in a band – the statistical, not performing, type- somewhere in the 1200-1400 and 1400-1600 region. It was reported that this championship was a bruising contest between the University of Nairobi and Kenyatta University.
There was a time when my alma mater, Moi University, abounded with the auguries of an organisation headed for an impressive future, and, in fact, did pip its peers frequently and consistently in many a competition. Lately, the place has been convulsing in the throes of malignant institutional malaise.
As other institutions indulged in the computing comparative merits, Moi University swayed precariously on the precipice of abysmal paralysis, occasioned by industrial action at the instance of its academic staff, who decried evident unwillingness of the organisation’s leadership to resolve long-standing issues related to staff welfare and poor working conditions.
Having presented the administration with a dismaying plethora of unresolved grievances, undaunted staff finally resorted to extreme measures. In short order, they were joined by other workers. The student body, frustrated by the awkward break and bored due to indefinite suspension of learning, joined their lecturers in demonstrations. For their trouble, one of them was shot, and the protests escalated to the point where the vice-chancellor declared the university closed.
A parliamentary probe into aspects of the university’s malaise has established that runaway corruption is at the heart of its failure to meet elementary obligations.
The national government has committed to inject funds to facilitate the resumption of some semblance of functionality.
Indubitably, the news about Moi University continuously confirms its turn to unmitigated disaster.
Global rankings typically entail metrics closely aligned with a university's core purpose: teaching, research environment, research quality, perception by industry and international outlook.
Whether a varsity opens and closes each semester according to schedule, administers examinations and awards marks to every student, pays staff salaries on time and remits third-party deductions in full, are routine managerial concerns that should not deplete a university's institutional bandwidth, much less define it before the world.
A vice-chancellor's most shameful assignment must be signing a circular to close a university because its leadership has no social capital to reach an agreement with staff on basic matters, and management has lost the confidence of its fundamental stakeholders.
The spectre of incorrigible dysfunction which haunts all our public universities is certainly much more complex, with roots in broader historic policy and governance failures at the national level.
This by no means extenuates the criminal mismanagement and dreadful impunity that has hollowed out Moi University from a rising entrant of great promise, into a scene of unspeakable crime and a maimed, disfigured victim of intolerable depredation.
It must always be borne in mind that it was only after both the Council for University Education and the council for Legal Education threatened to withdraw accreditation for its school of law that this university reluctantly erected a desultory shack and called it a library, notwithstanding that it has struggled ever since to furnish it with the necessary goods, and that for decades, the school of law was the golden goose which regularly transformed the institution into a real estate sector giant, in the process converting sundry administrators into multimillionaires.
A radical, expansive, thorough, open, systematic and honest deliberation must take place quickly to take full advantage of the reprieve afforded by the bailout and usher Moi University to its overdue come-to-Jesus. Otherwise, it will irreversibly defect from its constitutive objects and purposes, to join the gallery of parastatals that have been plundered and run aground.
The writer is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya
