There are moments in the life of an institution when words do not merely describe reality but summon it into being. Such moments are marked by speeches that stir hope, gestures that kindle renewal, and reforms that translate rhetoric into concrete experience. The University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), long described in tones of nostalgia as the “Lion’s Den” but more recently as an “abandoned poultry,” may well be entering such a moment under the stewardship of its 16th Vice Chancellor, Professor Simon Ortuanya. The mantra, “Simon is Working,” adopted in this piece, resonates with both parody and promise, carrying echoes of Nigeria’s political slogans yet demanding to be judged by the practical realities it inspires.
Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet
Agbedo, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam, is a contributing analyst to USAfrica.
Professor Ortuanya assumed office on 12 August 2025. Barely two weeks later, at his maiden Senate meeting of 27 August, he delivered an inaugural address that was nothing short of a master-class in oratorical finesse. With the cadence of a Shakespearean Brutus and the mellifluous suavity of a Martin Luther King Jnr, the 16th Vice Chancellor swung effortlessly and seamlessly from point to point, each movement punctuated by thunderous applause from senators, who sensed in his words the stirring of a new dawn. In substance and style, his roadmap for a purpose-driven administration struck the right notes: teaching and learning, infrastructural renaissance, moral rearmament, attitudinal reset, and institutional reinvention. These were not mere items on a wish list but pillars of transformation upon which the “only University of Nigeria” might rise again from its faded glory.
To capture the spirit of that moment, one recalls an Igbo anecdote about Mbedịọgụ, the tortoise, (a. k. a Ikemefula), and his wife Aniga. Some days after a night of bed gymnastics with his coital challenger, Mbe relaxed under the eaves of his hut, watching as Aniga spat profusely. In his mind, that was proof that his efforts were not in vain—perhaps even a sign of pregnancy. Whether or not it truly was, he was satisfied. For the distinguished senators that August afternoon, Ortuanya’s sonorous words were like Aniga’s spitting: a gratifying sign, a foretaste of what might yet become a full-blown five-year pregnancy culminating in the birth of quintuplets of reform—reimagined teaching and learning, infrastructural facelift, moral rearmament, work ethic reset, and overall reinvention.
One month later, the signs of conception were visible. Construction sites once abandoned hummed with activity as contractors returned to work. The Innoson tractor assembly plant at the Faculty of Engineering was set to roar back to life. The high-rise Senate building, mothballed since the ground-breaking ceremonies, found new breath. A decrepit fuel station in the Works Department began its resurrection. Road networks across the campus were reborn under reconstruction. UNN was slowly becoming a construction yard. The palpable sense of motion was undeniable: Simon, like Willie in Anambra, was indeed working.
But Ortuanya’s refreshingly innovative touches were not confined to bricks and mortar. They extended into the very culture of Senate itself. A senator now walks into the PAA Senate Chambers, announces to the clerk, who peers into a laptop to tick attendance, and in return receives a neatly printed meal ticket. Inside, the seats are no longer a scramble for the privileged few; they are arranged in alphabetical order, each bearing a senator’s name lapel. The symbolic orderliness restores dignity to the chamber. As debates stretch into the afternoon, whiffs of aromatic buffet drift into the hall, whetting appetites, activating salivary glands, lubricating the rough edges of dry arguments, and fast-forwarding the Senate toward a motion for adjournment so that the feast might begin in earnest. These are not trivial indulgences but deliberate touches that recalibrate the tone of institutional life – discipline with dignity, order with reward. Who, then, can doubt that Simon is indeed working?
The resonance of this mantra finds echoes in Nigeria’s wider political landscape. In Anambra politics, the refrain ‘Willie is Working’ became a slogan of continuity, at once a proclamation of delivery and a parody depending on one’s loyalties. In Enugu State, Governor Peter Mbah’s disruptive mantra, “Tomorrow is Here,” reframes governance as the immediacy of promise. In the context of UNN, “Simon is Working” and “Tomorrow is Here” emerge as twin refrains – parody-turned-truth, irony-turned-inspiration. Together, they signal not just the continuation of hope but its arrival, not just rhetoric but the reality of rebirth within the Lion’s den.
Placed side by side, “Willie is Working” and “Tomorrow is Here” offer two registers of leadership: the continuity of steady effort and the impatience of disruptive immediacy. When interwoven into the context of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, they both find curious resonance in Ortuanya’s emerging style of administration. His mantra, “Simon is Working,” borrows its cadence from Obiano but infuses it with the immediacy of Mbah’s urgency. It is not merely that Simon is working; it is that tomorrow must already be breaking through the clouds at Nsukka. Thus, the university finds itself at the intersection of parody and promise, where political slogans of continuity and disruption intermingle in the crucible of academic rebirth.
This layering of slogans reveals an important truth about institutions and societies. Language matters. A phrase repeated often enough can become either a hollow echo or a self-fulfilling prophecy, depending on the willpower behind it. At UNN today, one senses that “Simon is Working” is not mere sloganeering but a declaration in motion. Each repaired road, each revived project, each re-ordered Senate meeting lends the phrase flesh and blood. It ceases to be parody and begins to acquire the texture of truth.
Of course, words and early signs, however promising, must not lull UNN into complacency. The spitting of Aniga is not yet the birth of quintuplets. The challenge before Professor Ortuanya is to sustain momentum, to resist the fatigue of mid-tenure, and to carry the University through the arduous journey of full-term delivery. The dangers of derailment are real – financial constraints, entrenched bureaucracies, resistant mindsets, and the ever-present Nigerian malaise of inconsistency. Yet, therein also lies the test of true leadership – to transform applause into productivity, slogans into systems, and fleeting hope into institutional legacy.
The challenge for the UNN community – faculty, staff, students, alumni, host communities – is equally stark. A Vice Chancellor, however visionary, cannot singlehandedly transform an institution. The community must align itself with the spirit of renewal, shedding cynicism and embracing shared responsibility, right attitude to work, and a permanent pause on asset-stripping and cannibalization of property. A reinvention of the Lion’s Den demands not just the roar of leadership but also the collective march of the pride.
Ultimately, if Ortuanya sustains this early promise, posterity will not remember him merely as the 16th Vice Chancellor but as the midwife of UNN’s renaissance. The story will not be told simply as “Simon is Working” but as “Simon worked, and UNN was reborn.” To paraphrase the wisdom of our legendary Chinua Achebe, when a new dawn truly breaks, it does not announce itself with fanfare; it is seen in the light it brings to every corner. May that light, long dimmed in Nsukka, shine again.
In concluding beyond the echoes of mantra, the story of UNN at this critical juncture is not simply about a Vice-Chancellor, nor even about the slogan that has come to define him. It is about whether a community long accustomed to deferred hopes can finally dare to believe again. “Simon is Working” is more than a tagline; it is a wager on trust, a covenant between leadership and followership. But mantras alone do not build institutions. What builds them is fidelity to vision, courage in adversity, and the collective will of a people determined to reclaim their heritage.
In this sense, the fusion of “Simon is Working” with “Tomorrow is Here” acquires profound meaning. It suggests that the university’s rebirth is not deferred to some distant horizon but beckons in the immediacy and urgency of the present. The hope, then, is that UNN will not merely echo political mantras but will embody them, transforming slogans into reality, parody into prophecy fulfilled. If tomorrow is truly here, then today must not be squandered. For the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, this is the charge of history, to seize the moment, to work while it is day, and to prove, beyond satire and beyond slogans, that a new dawn is possible, echoing Achebe’s wisdom that “when the moon is shining, the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.”
