INTEGRI PROCEDAMUS

The phenomenal history of university of Ghana by Francis Abgodeka according to Prof R. Addo-fening is a solid work of historical scholarship, telling the story of legon from its beginnings in a straight forward narrative that is at once lucid and engrossing as it is informative. Yet this massive work of historical roundedness and of consequent value for every student written for the fiftieth anniversary of the premier university are still languishing in the shelves of the book shop gathering dust after dust after a decade of its publication and the impending sixtieth anniversary is not only uninspiring and lackluster in outlook but insipid enough to inspire students to read about the grand history or was it a long night of howling nightmare of academic hyper myopia and intellectual languor of the premier university. No student is interested in legon as a historical entity, the ideals that led to its inception and the numerous huddles and obstacles it has trampled down, and the efforts of some of the illustrious alumni who held together the tottering institution at the time of crisis and on the brink of suicide at six thirty.
Legon is fast losing its symbols. An academic arena for research and higher education! Its onetime cherished story of blood and toil and the indefatigable and unflinching thirst for knowledge displayed by some of the ablest men of the country and its compelling tale of survival and determination and uncompromising stance in the midst of national crisis and how it resurrected as still the sole custodian of knowledge and academic excellence is now becoming a fable, sinking ignominiously into the pantheon of oblivion. The numerous symbols and statues on campus, the intriguing connotations and esoteric meaning implicit in the various names given to the various halls and the structures have assumed a decorative and embellishing outlook. What then do the chimes of the learning towers herald when the professors of knowledge are rapidly losing grip on the monumental and inspiring stories that reveals the labyrinth of the premier university. To what future is one cast if one has no glorious past or turmoil to inspire or to warn?
Despite its febrile failings and left to wander in the desuetude of modernity, legon is quite complex and it has some of its cryptic ideals embedded in highly intricate symbols of academia which is left to the initiated student to decode and explore its full import and build upon it.

I quote an anecdote Francis abgodeka inserts into his history of the premier university to illustrate the point I am making.
In 1948 the UGCC approved the colleges motto as "Vigil evocat Auroram" in view of the warning of the British colonial office at that time: that governments should not interfere in the affairs of the university colleges they were establishing in the British colonies, the meaning of this motto was that the new venture of university education in the gold coast could only succeed if the university college behaved like the cockerel, the watchful bird calling forth the dawn, i.e. keeping vigil to protect its academic freedom from being eroded through political intervention in its affairs. The cockerel was chosen to symbolize this motto.
When the UCGC gave way to the independent university of an independent Ghana, the message symbolized by the cockerel in the college’s motto with it’s colonial background lost its appeal to the university community. By 1963 when the independent was laying down its guidelines for growth and development, it was felt that inspiration for this growth could best be drawn from Ghana’s own cultural roots preserved in a new motto and a new crest. The new motto must take its source from traditional African thought but must be expressed in the scholastic language of international academic circles where legon has already won an enviable position. So when in that year professor A.A kwapong, a classical scholar took office as the first Ghanaian pro vice chancellor, he was assigned the responsibility of producing the new motto and crest. He got Professor Manwere Opoku in the institute of African studies (I A S) to design the crest, of course in traditional edinkra symbols. Prof opoku chose the symbol of three straight ferns (aya in twi), which because of their quality of always growing straight up in the forest represent, in traditional thought, straightness, truthfulness, integrity. He also took the symbol of two interlocking ram horns (in the Twi language Guanini mmen toa so) which we know never stop growing therefore depict progress. Kwapong, the professor of classics provided the Latin rendering of the motto "intergri procedamus" progressing with integrity, inscribed beneath the symbols.

The prevalence of symbols and cryptic statues and memorials scattered on campus if patiently scrutinized and dissected would unravel interesting and unchallengeable outburst of inspiration for students. Some of the clandestine objects points out landmarks in the history of the premier university which has shaped the destiny and the course of the university. It is when you know and understand the happenings of the past that you would be able to appreciate the present and be able to envisage what will happen in the future. The crest and the motto has served as a constant reminder to those who were able to see beyond its symbolical connotations to work hard. Proceed in truth and integrity.

Now students are apt to take inane interest in events which are not only irrelevant but time wasting as well which has no affinity with wit or intellectuality.
The well laid structures they are oblivious to. They see and analyze things on superficial basis. They sing the anthem with glee without any effort to get down to its import and application on a practical basis. One wonders if they don’t apply their theoretical and highly artificial and idealistic way of viewing events to everything they encounter ON CAMPUS. Symbols will always remain symbols it will always be devoid of practicality. Statues will remain statues without life. What message can you carry across with the bust of Nkrumah and sabah to an inmate of sabah hall who is at the university for the sole purpose of obsolete theories which he will take nowhere. Why must he read the history of legon. Whether legon evolved from the le tree which was situated on the hill at that time or le the ga word for knowledge is not his present concern. He knows he is on the hill of knowledge for theories. The history and symbols of legon is a piece of curiosity for the few who are obsessed with the majesty of the institution. He went to the towers to earn degrees for miniature privileges and allowances, personal aggrandizement and the sheepish acknowledgement of the fact that he attended legon.