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From orchestrating a purposeless workers screening exercise, getting stoned for non payment of salaries, hunting critics as one would hunt rodents, bribing electoral tribunals, and now proscribing ASUU, you would have to agree with me that Governor Yahaya Bello has turned Kogi’s government to a comedy stage where he is the chief jester.
I have sat quietly for long watching the great comic thespian amuse me with his antics on stage. Sometimes, the boy did manage to get a smile from me and at other times, I would shake my head sideways slowly. But the drama continues indefinitely as one of those horrible season films that goes on and on without end.
Yahaya Bello has been smoking or sniffing something and I am sure it is something much more higher than weed. It must be something sublime and energizing. He is so caught up in the web of being “the goverNUT!”, donning military attires and being referred to as “His Excellenshit!” that he forgets that we are no more in a military dispensation but a democratic era. One wonders who advises that boy and if he is physically blind, is he also mentally blind? Even if he is mentally blind, is he also bereft of sense or sick upstairs?
My sympathy is with the students of Kogi State University and other tertiary institutions in the state that are currently shut down as a result of the lackadaisical attitude of the light fingered governor of the state and his cohorts. In as much as many of you find the banning of ASUU a laudable achievement by the governor of the state and an end to the academic lacuna created in the state, I say that banning ASUU is not the ultimate solution and certainly not the kind of solution you need. It resolves nothing.
The proscription of ASUU is like a man who discovers his problems are too heavy for him and decides to bury his head in several bottles of alcohol only to wake up the following morning to find out that the problems are still there waiting for him to wake up!
This is what happens when you make a clown a governor, the foolishness is second to none! We have laughed at Bello’s antics but this one of proscribing ASUU is what I call “the act of Comedy taken too far”.
A gathering of intellectuals is not like that of common market women, you can not brow beat them or bully them into submission! If history is anything to go by, he would not be the first and he would not be the last, he should ask history if the despot, Sani Abacha (who unfortunately is Bello’s role model), succeeded with ASUU. Goodluck Jonathan’s government with a garage park tout (Wike) as the Minister of Education is a most recent example he can also learn from.
Yahaya Bello cannot force people to return to work against their wish, he does not have the power to proscribe ASUU and he will see hell if the national body decides to join hands with the state body. There is freedom of association in Nigeria and it must be respected.
Common sense should tell Yahaya Bello that he cannot fight the truth, it will always be there. Teachers mould the minds of people, you can not abandon them in the pit of starvation. You cannot expect them to walk into classrooms chewing white board markers. Pay to them what is due and let peace be!
Yet, the need to make the governor retract his dirty words is a fight everyone who loves peace and liberty must take on. If he gets away with banning ASUU, he will come for the Students’ Union Government tomorrow and who knows if the Kogi State Labour Union and NUT will follow next? He must not be allowed to set such a precedence and I say this not because of today but for tomorrow. We should remember that whatever little benefits accrued to teachers today came as a result of the struggles of the past, today teachers in the same vein owe the future the duty of ensuring others do not undergo the pain they endured. We must not let politicians treat the moulders of human minds as scums!
Someone should warn Yahaya Bello before it is too late that he plays the jester too much (his government is the grandmother of all fraud) and his comic drama will soon mutate to become a tragedy should he continue to steer the Kogi State bus towards the same route.
– Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy
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