Combatting the Imperativeness of Modernity in Students' Unrest: The Need to Decolonise the Minds through Ubuntu

Abstract

The trajectory of students' unrest in Nigeria universities has been linked to the underside of modernity. By responding to this, the study explores conditions necessary to decolonise the mindset of university authorities and students, against modernity as an offshoot of students' unrest. Ubuntu philosophy rationalised the study while Transformative Paradigm lensed the process with the use of Participatory Action Research design. The study involved ten co-researchers, three university management staff, three students' leaders, two security personnel and two university lecturers were selected using Convenient Sampling Technique. Focus Group Discussion was employed to generate data, and the data were subjected to Conversational Analysis to make sense of the data. Students' involvement in decision-making, democratic and facilitative leadership style, were found as tools to decolonise the space of students' unrest as an underside of modernity. The reconstruction of the university system against social unrest emanating from modernity becomes expedient through Ubuntu cum decoloniality.