ALUMUNUS

For a person to return to his homeland, to his Alma mater after a long absence is unparalleled favor. One must be proud, be elevated to a solemn height. Even if there are noticeable changes and improvements. I can see some changes here in Legon, some adjustments here and there, renovations, and new lecture halls. Nevertheless, things have not changed at all. Though some are apt to point that the premier university has really improved in its inception half a century ago, recent events is a clear indication that things have deteriorated, growing from bad to worse. it is the same old buildings, the same red roof tiles, the same plan while the population has increased to unprecedented figure. The hall of residence is in a mess. Students will have to cram themselves in a hall they are supposed to reside with ease and learn. They have to sprawl on the floor like helpless accident victims and the daring ones who have sworn heaven and earth not to remain outside the academic walls of the learning towers would manage to stay on campus and perpetually hang around the less than life size rooms in the name of perching. This shows how fervent they are to pursue higher education despite the manic odds. Strange, curious, inexplicable. They were politely refused to be given a hall of residence because the fact of the matter is the rooms were long occupied by students. Residents or non-residents, they have a way of asserting themselves. Waiving of naïve prejudices cast by fellow students, and despite all the shameful obstacles that dog their steps in their quest to enjoy the ambrosial fragrance of academia; most importantly the intellectual ambience of the premier university, their petty human desires are not warped. In the stillness of the night when the learning towers maintain dead silence they will trudge the lonely streets with their fiancées’ to the academic ghettoes and plead with their collogues to be “excused” for the night. They are like eneke the bird in Things fall Apart. They are known as “perchers”, but like the bird, if the authorities have learnt to shoot without missing, they have also learnt to fly without perching. The authorities are privy to the fact that they are non – re. yet they have a terse answer to the ignominious position they have being relegated., looking at the vagaries and intricacies of education; the burdensome nature of mastering knowledge and putting it to effective use, and with an albatross of non re stigma hanging around ones neck, battling with the ruinous system to stay on campus and maintain a balance, sanity, while the vast stretches of legon lands lie waste. When I look at the original plan of this institution when it came it being, the factors that led to its establishment, its like it is taking more than it has, we are exhausting the ideals that led to its inception. After all Legon for half a century has produced so many scholars and intellectuals. These eminent personalities are the same people who will parade the country saying that things have deteriorated at the premier university. Instead of them to find ways and means of helping their prestigious alma mater. Of course, some are helping, making donations and investing in education, but it is simply not enough. We must rebuild Legon. But it must be a collective effort and
not a fashionable display of rhetoric about its problems.