Vexing dons and ‘Biafran forces’
Welcome back, President Buhari. Your return has answered many questions. The rumour industry will now go into recession; so will its rent-a-crowd counterpart. But your plate is full and spilling over. There is plenty of work to be done, as you well know. Perhaps you want to start with the education sector so as to insure our collective future against ignorance….
We have a culture of allowing wounds to fester. When puss oozes with malodorous pungency, we panic. Before long, we have gaping gangrenous sores that could, punch for punch, knock the hell out of any antibiotic. Then we start begging the world to help us cure a condition we ourselves could have arrested long ago.
Our university teachers are vexing. At the same time, the Biafran ‘gendarmes’ are showcasing their parade to the delight of their commander-in-chief, Nnamdi Kanu. Those are two wounds that needn’t become gaping sores before we apply medication.
First, let’s look at the current strike by the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities. It is all too familiar. Four years ago (July 8, 2013), in the wake of an ASUU strike, my column, “When Teachers Vex”, analysed the ‘Ogbanje’ cycle of strikenegotiation-promises-truce-strike that had become part of the calendar of public universities and counselled that we could do better. In that piece which fits the present circumstance as if it was inspired by it, I said: “Over the years the Nigerian government has been good at negotiating agreements with ASUU but without any plans to implement what has been agreed upon. Where then is honour? Where is integrity?
“The pattern that has emerged since the days of military rule is as follows: Every year, ASUU would go on strike and the Federal Government would call for “dialogue”. Emergency ‘men and women of goodwill’ and traditional rulers would beg ASUU not to vex and that the lecturers should give the government the benefit of the doubt to do the right thing as far as the ASUU demands are concerned. After much pressure ASUU would blink. An agreement with timelines is fashioned out. The strike is called off only to resume the very next year on account of non-implementation of earlier agreements.
“…When those in government want to blackmail ASUU they claim that the lecturers are fighting only for pay rise. No assertion could be more fraudulent.
“ASUU’s demands are actually a list of what those in government ought to have commissioned experts to produce at great cost. The charter of demands states the problems confronting universities in the area of teaching, research, conditions of service for academics, infrastructure, funding - indeed the entire gamut.
“…I think our university teachers have been given the short end of the stick for too long. They have a right to vex - and time has taught them that (pardon the lingo) unless they vex wellwell, the government would continue to play deaf and dumb and lame and blind.”
Where were the senators who are now appealing to ASUU to go back to work these past two years? The fact that the lethargy that characterised the Jonathan administration’s treatment of the education sector persists even today is a sad reminder that in these climes the more things change the more they remain the same.
Then, the IPOB grand delusion. In the last couple of days, video clips of Nnamdi Kanu inspecting a guard of honour mounted by uniformed ‘Biafran Security Service’ have been going round the social media. What rankles about the Biafran agitation is that credible people who ought to speak out don’t do so until things get out of hand; then, they shout, ‘Victimisation!’
When Nnamdi Kanu was calling Northerners ‘animals’ and Yorubas ‘bastards’, he was only watering the grounds for the anti-igbo audio clip recently released by some Hausa elements. I have taken time to listen to that clip and digest its translation. I condemn it because it is frighteningly hateful and primitive. But where are the Igbos with credibility who can call this attention seeker, Kanu, to order before his actions become tied irretrievably to the destiny of his people?
I have the same dim view of haters as Steve Maraboli who said, “Most haters are stuck in a poisonous mental prison of jealousy and self-doubt that blinds them to their own potentiality.” And Nnamdi Kanu is nothing if not a hater.
When this IPOB thing first became noticeable, I cautioned that Kanu needed to stop stereotyping other people as less than human, lest the compliment be returned on a grander scale. I have probably written as many articles as journalists of Igbo extraction on the need to have more Igbos appointed into the Buhari administration even though they enjoyed a bazar under the last Jonathan administration. But this hateful namecalling?!
Is Kanu insulting Hausas and Yorubas on behalf of Igbo people many of who live and work in the Southwest and the Northern states? Those who condemn the anti-Igbo clip while justifying Kanu’s hatepeddling and vile insults on other ethnic groups, are as blinkered as the young man and equally culpable.
May these mis-steps not be another set of building blocks for ethnic cleansing against innocent and hardworking Igbos in Northern Nigeria and elsewhere who are only carrying out their legitimate businesses among other ethnic nationalities and living within the law. Déjà vu?