The Symbolism Of Citation In The Nigeria Academic System -By Adepoju Isaiah Gbenga

Movie title: Citation
Running time: 115 mins
Director: Kunle Afolayan
Starring: Temi Otedola, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Ini Edo, Gabriel Afolayan and Seun Kuti (cameo appearance).
Year of Release: 2020

The just-released work from Mr. Kunle Afolayan, an international acclaimed producer, movie director and actor himself, is so far one of the best Made-in-Nigeria movies that perfectly reveal the doggedness of the Nigeria academic system. Nigeria academic structure has plethora of malfunctioning and long stinking decayness in it: delay of salary; lack of proper provision of social amenities and reading materials; the rise of thuggery, cultism, aristoism; and the subtle indulgence of some lecturers’ impunity and barbaric intolerance, and the governmental negligence of this phenomenal altogether. In the film, Citation, the strongest of the message was focused on the theme of sexual harassment, abuse and mismanagement of the school’s adminstrative power, and immorality – gross indiscipline.

At the onset of the film, the audience is introduced to the enormous perpetration of immorality in the Nigeria tertiary institution, making use of the motif, that always include a female student and a male lecturer threatening to be indulged consummation as a distinction-gratification parameter, but as it rarely ends, except on occasions where the lecturer is unNigerian and does not know how to be smart with his choice of hotels or guest house, the lecturer was caught by three group of young men whom will, in the long run, be called by the school’s judicial panel assailants and charged responsible for the death of the lecturer who couldn’t resist the shame of being shamed and had ended up in the mouth of the Ife bus. In the end, they were rusticated.

These consecutive scenes begins and ends the motif of the always incongruous story of assault and attempted rape and rape by an administrative officer (e.g lecturer, Dean, head of faculty, etc).
Then two years after the setting of the scene, like the berry a child puts under his tongue to sweeten the passage of food, we are introduced to a new introvert character, Moremi, played with perceived mastery, Ms. Temiloluwa Otedola, who even to her debut entrance into the dramatic realm has already carved a niche for herself in the top of Netflix ranking. As stated by reviewer Jayne Augoye concerning Temi Otedola: “‘Citation’ was the debut movie appearance of the fashion and lifestyle blogger and surprisingly she effortlessly melts into her role”.
The story begins proper in the following scene, even though at my first watch I was perplexed and passionately amused with the short-interval flashbacks and what, at first, seemed to me like flashforward (which at the long run I realized it really was flashforward). There were many characters. Characters who were introduced as normal students of the Obafemi Awolowo University, except Moremi, who seemed to be avoided like a plague and also spoken with like a man avoiding a leper. The story becomes entangled when a twenty-year old master’s degree girl, Moremi, was woven with a platonic relationship with her lecturer, Professor Lucien N’Dyare.

Then the film fritz into the trial process of Professor N’Dyare, the brilliant professor with the bushy and kinky hair, and Moremi Oluwa, the aspiring Master’s degree holder. A post-graduate aspirant.

Three interesting things helped in the building of the plot: flashback and suspense and flashforward. In the first scene, we, the audience, are sitting uncomfortably in front of the school judicial panel, wondering why the lovely Professor is sitting with his lawyer and his ‘favorite’ student, Moremi, alongside her Female Advocacy NGO lawyer (Ajike); this speaks volume, and it made the audience look out for errors in the professor or Moremi, that can lead them to being probed: one, a defendant, the other, a complainant. During their trip to Senegal, University, the plot continues to push forward the intimate proximity between the Professor and Moremi, who in the previous scenes had been introduced as attendants of the school judicial hearing and on top of this itching and disturbing plotting edifice, the audience are still then fed with flashes of a rape (the flash was brief and it was a complex assessment whether the scene was rape or attempted rape or merely the up-down prostration of the professor and Moremi).
The film reaches a climax during the attempted rape at Professor N’Dyare’s apartment: the professor who at the onset of the film was introduced as a brilliant forty-year old man (who had caused caused beaded feelings in the young heart of Moremi) suddenly becomes a psychopath. And Moremi, the naive but brilliant suddenly becomes strong, so strong to hit the Professor in the scrotum and make a run for it. It introduces them as a representation of their opposites, or the unveiling of their pretense.

This intimacy, inevitably, had become obviously noticeable, even by those who seemed to be uninterested and unintroduced and excluded in the intimate building of the protagonist’s idiosyncrasies to the audience (e.g the testimony of a witness attested and made reference to the incident at Senegal, at Agori island, where the two had ‘wandered’ away and had been suspected of something a little, even in a modicum quantity, more than a ‘lecturer-student-relationship’. Of course, Professor N’Dyare has begun to see their platonic relationship as more than his mere evaluation of Moremi’s prolonged seclusion with him – as mere infatuation – but as something more. Something that climaxes in his attempt of rape, of Moremi at his lodge, after Easter party festivities had halted.

Now in the continuous study of the unrepresented ways in the film; like, what if Professor N’Dyare had eventually raped Moremi, even after physically assaulting her. What would have happened if she hadn’t learned a little self-defense from Koyejo, her taekwondo boyfriend (nicknamed Jackie Chan)? What could have happened, or perhaps, there wouldn’t be any women rights movement created after her, her face on poster fronts? These are diverse speculations to note. The audience should fill in the gap of the importance of some essential details in the film: in the understanding of self-defense; how the body of the opposite sex in times of predatoryness works; how to be smart in terms of force against human existentiality. The male and the female gender are entitled to the acquiration of self-defense, but since the issue of rape are mostly perpetuated by the male gender, leaving the female gender on the noose of apex victimization, I believe it is a matter of essentiality.

Now sifting quickly to our individual assessment of a phenomenal, whilst utilizing the individual testimony of the five witnesses:
“They were close, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary… Despite their different capacities, INTELLECTUALLY [THEY’RE DRAWN TO CLOSE PROXIMITY]” The first witness, Koyejo, said.
“Moremi is fond of saying… Age to her was [like] mind and matter, if she didn’t mind, it didn’t matter…but SHE WAS CLEARLY OBSESSED WITH THIS MAN (Professor Ndierre)” the second witness, Gloria, retorted.

“I definitely saw Moremi TAKE AN INTEREST IN THE PROFESSOR… And it was very very unusual… IT’S OBVIOUS SHE ADMIRES HIM, every one in class knew…she obviously admires him, ‘but as for me, I believe Jesus will intervene’” the third witness concluded.

(I like that the film included, even though briefly, the metaphysical obsession of the African breed calling on God, the metaphysical being, “to intervene”).

” Professor N’Dyare… Gave PREFERENTIAL ATTENTION to Moremi” the fourth witness said
And the fifth witness, Koyejo, was asked whether “Ms. Oluwa’s display of interest in professor Ndierre; [if] it go far beyond student-lecturer relationship…?” Then Koyejo replied with a thoughtful “NO”
These testimonies are only the individual assessment of the situation as viewed from the perspectives of the witnesses, but the only self-driven accusation, from Moremi’s friend, Gloria, was somewhat rewarded with her inability to mingle with the confluence of the students celebrating the bravery of Moremi in the lecture room at the finishing lines of the film. To me, I believe it is the proper judgement passed by Eledua, of both human conditions and mannerism and under the thump of the directorship of Kunle Afolayan, the acute producer of the film.

In Conclusion, Even though Citation made use of the school environment, the students and lecturers and their idiosyncrasies, both as individual human beings and a member of a communal adhesion, yet it is synonymous with our present lives; the life we lead outside of the school walls. I believe the minimality of diverse major characters are in line with comparing the work in the film to our history’s livid scope on every of our action. Like how Moremi stated after she won at the final hearing, to the journalists and News media; she was just a girl who came to the school for her post graduate studies, so she could achieve a dream of being a Master’s degree holder at the young age of twenty. It would have been also an internal dissipating process for her, her trial and the collision of her interest’s with her Professor’s; and that jumble of lukewarm emotions created this feeling of consequentiality in her. Taking a case sample of how when told by her lawyer about the new movement just birthed, using her story (even if uncomplete) as a motivation and inspiration for other students who have been victim, of Professor N’Dyare or other gormandized lecturers or school administrative officers, to ‘Speak Up’: how she profaned the founding of the women rights association.

And that is the reality Citation has attempted to evoke, and by my evaluation of the work, it has been successfully fulfilling its obligation as a branch of the creative arts (dramatic arts). When I watched, I felt as if I was Moremi, and I was placed betwixt two walls and standing in the agile shadow of oppression, depression, suppression, and the insidious innuendo of the society to absorbing the degrading eccentricity of absolute filthiness. We are reminded that we are an individual in our fight until the society, the optimistic part of it, sees the fight we nurture in us, and that is when the society takes its spear and go to war with us.

The denouement of the film is a call for us to be unified by Ubuntu, to fight the ills of our society as one unified by it.

The climax teaches us the essence of stablishing our mental and emotional health during the times of tribulations when all we seem to be is a tiny dot on the page of history (compare when the lawyer told Moremi that a victim had been charged and rusticated in the school before – the saga of the girl that opened the film).

The building of the plot teaches me that anytime I’ve been admitted into Obafemi Awolowo University (since it’s my Nigeria dream school), anything apart from platonic dealings with officers of higher or lower cadre are frivolous, unethical and a beacon for greater goriness, for me as a student and to the career of the officer.

The film Citation is a great film. “In a nutshell, ‘Citation’ is undiluted drama, brilliant dialogues, and plot condensed into 151 minutes of nothing short of pure entertainment. No fluffs” (Jayne Augoye).

ADEPOJU Isaiah Gbenga is a seventeen-year old poet, a dramatist, an editor and a reviewer. Instagram (IjayaDynasty).