By BISI OLAWUNMI
The four-year journey to earning the Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Mass Communication ended in euphoric celebration at the second convocation for the award of PhD degrees by Babcock University, Ilisan-Remo, Ogun state on Sunday, June 2, 2013. It was a day of fulfillment. Even then, this day of joy still had its moments of anxiety and stress typical of the hard road that was travelled for the attainment of this ultimate prize in academia.
I woke up early that Sunday morning in my hometown, Ijebu-Isiwo, in Ijebu-Ode local government area of Ogun state, which is just about 30 minutes drive to Babcock university. We the graduating students were to report at the university stadium venue of the convocation ceremony by 6.30 in the morning ! I left my house early, in advance of others, with a young nephew for the trip, but had to go to my father’s house where my mother lives (she wont abandon her late husband’s house ) to pick an item.
That was the beginning of the stress, as immediately on leaving my father’s house I had to pass a water-filled, deep pothole, symptomatic of the bad condition of roads in our locality. Our governor, Ibikunle Amosun, seems more interested in road construction in the urban areas which he can showcase that the government is working. Driving through the pothole, I heard a grating sound, coming from under the car. A C-Class Mercedes is not a low car but then it is not meant to be driven through water filled craters on roads. A jagged section of the pothole had torn apart the underside of the car.
I initially thought debris had got hooked to the car. My heart sank when my nephew told me : daddy, it is a part of the body of the car that has been torn apart. Today of all days ? And to compound matters, it started drizzling. Rain ! And I started sweating. I was musing : I passed this same road the previous evening with six people in the car, two of them ‘big mamas’, and a lot of luggage. So, why now, with just two of us – lightweights – and no luggage. I had to call on god to shame the devil. The only panel beater in town was not yet at his workshop. I got directed to his house, but en-route saw a multi-talented artisan who got under the car and fixed the problem. By now, it was already about 7.10am.
I got to Babcock university at 7.40 and there was already a long queue of vehicles and nobody was being allowed to drive into the campus, not even the graduands. I had to park at the high school opposite the campus and clutching my academic regalia started the hurried walk to the gate. A shuttle bus service took us to the stadium. My feeling of relief can best be imagined when I got to the stadium at about 8.15am and saw that other graduating students were just milling outside the venue – the march in was yet to begin ! So, on graduation day, I got delayed, experienced stress and anxiety but still made it – and that was how the journey to bagging the PhD had been.
It had been a journey of resilience since earning a Master’s degree in 1981 at the University of Lagos. The PhD journey had actually began at Olabisi Onabanjo University, (OOU) Ago Iwoye in 2008 where I later got the MPhil (Master of Philosophy degree) There, the HOD, Mass Comm., Prof. Idowu Sobowale, was my lecturer at the M.SC class in Unilag while the PhD programme co-ordinator, Prof. Lai Oso, was a Unilag student who did summer job with us at Ogun State Broadcasting Corporation (OGBC) in 1977 when I was an Assistant Editor !
At the Hooding ceremony at Babcock on My 30, 2013 which is a form of induction into the elite academic fraternity, where the PhD graduates are formally decorated with the academic regalia and hood, the Dean, School of Postgraduate Studies, Prof. Demola Tayo dropped the hint that yours sincerely is the ‘father’ of the class. Prof. Kayode Makinde, the Vice-Chancellor of the university, in his closing remarks, and by way of reinforcement, told the assembly that my daughter was among pioneer graduates of Babcock university in 2003 who also read mass communication while my son, who read economics, belonged to the second set – 2004.
Pursuing a doctorate degree is very challenging and when you are a senior citizen, which is what classmates in the programme call me, you face additional challenges. There is the veiled poser : At this age, for how long do you hope to reap the benefit of this degree ? That is in god’s hand. Some wonder that having been a Foreign Correspondent in Washington, D.C. (1985 -1989) and an Assistant Director of News at Voice of Nigeria, (2000 -2005) among others, why this stress ? My mother – she is 89 – was more concerned with the physical stress I faced when she noticed the frequency of my coming to Ijebu from Iwo, Osun state, where I now live.
She could not understand what an “agbalagba” (an elderly one) is doing being a student again. “O kawe ni Nsukka, a kawe ni Eko, e wo tun ni eleyi? “. ( You read at Nsukka,(University of Nigeria, Nsukka 1975) you read at Lagos (Unilag) which one is this again ?) Well, I was able to conveniently carry the financial burden, but the mental and physical rigours were immense. I did a three-year content analysis of three newspapers and at some point I sought my supervisor’s approval to reduce the duration to two years. Prof. Dayo Alao wont countenance it, except if I was prepared to go back to pre-field stage ! So, I had to slug it out.
At Bowen university, Iwo, where I teach, the management is always demanding progress report from those on the PhD programme, adding to the pressure. There were nightmares on some of the journeys in the course of the programme. On one occasion, returning to Iwo at night from Babcock, trees were crashing across the road following heavy rain storms and thunder claps, after Ijebu-Ode, and I barely escaped one crashing on my car. Visibility was near zero, and the situation was scary, making me ponder : hope this PhD wont take my life !
Ultimately, I regard earning the PhD degree as a triumph of my maternal grandmother’s positive thinking. I had lived with her at Okelamuren village, near Ijebu-Ode, from infancy. She only had daughters and I was her first grandson. Villagers were always teasing her of over pampering me because she never had a male child. Of course, I beat their children in school, so my grandmother would confidently reply them that this child wont be a farmer : “o ma kawe de ibi ti won nka de” (this child will read to the highest educational level). I dedicated my PhD thesis to my doting grandmother, proud that I finally fulfilled her wish. Dr. BISI OLAWUNMI, EMAIL : olawunmibisi@yahoo.com . 0803 364 7571.
