When Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu reported for work as Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) in February 2016, he came cracking several jokes. One of them was that he intended to take the university "from noun to verb" – clearly playing on the word 'noun' which, written in capital letters, meant the varsity. Five years down the lane, that pun has assumed a palpable reality. The university, founded by the Shagari Administration in 1983, suspended a year later by the military regime of General Buhari and re-invented...