Prince
Tony Afejuku, a poet, is professor of English and Literature and
Creative Writing at the University of Benin. The former (ASUU) Uniben
Academic Staff Union of Universities’ chief and former head of English
Department, is certainly a remarkable personage and a scholar’s scholar,
indisputably one of the finest, most truthful and most engaging minds
of our generation. He is also a fearless, courageous and positively
controversial public intellectual and prolific commentator as attested
to, at least, in his high profile column in the Nigerian Tribune every
Monday. We cornered him, very much in an unwilling mood, at very short
notice, in Lagos as he was getting ready to go to Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts where he was scheduled to do a lecture on
Poetry of the Cosmos at an international gathering of scholars. The don
who says he detests and will never support anything evil, in one of his
salvos, said: “I am a very misunderstood human being, the simplest man
to deal with if you do that which is righteous and just, and you comport
yourself in such a manner that truly shows that you are a man of
honour.” If you are on the wrong side of honour you then must have a
full dose and taste of his wrong side. This much he explained to The
Guardian recently, as indicated above, in an exclusive interview on
various issues. Afejuku, a Fellow of the Literary Society of Nigeria
(LSN), spoke with SONY NEME just before he embarked on his latest
scholastic trip.
As a professor with the academia to contend with, how did all start?
Of
course I got here, where I am now, after fulfilling everything that I
needed to fulfill educationally. I went through the mill. I started from
the scratch as a Graduate Assistant in Zaria, Ahmadu Bello University
where I had my BA (Honours) and MA (both in English). Then the
institution was the hot-bed of radicalism in the country. I stand to be
corrected on this perspective. Before then I was a youth corper at the
old Borno State, at Potiskum, a location, a town now known to be in Yobe
State, I think it’s the capital of Yobe, in 1976, which is
unfortunately under an emergency rule as we speak.... I had a swell, a
fabulous , time there as a corper.... You know what I mean.... Gone are
the great NYSC days.... Those were days.... I have since risen to
become a professor of English and Literature…. Over the years I have
been doing criticism and theoretical studies, and also creative writing.
I am also a columnist basically on socio-political issues, as you
know…. I have been all over the place doing research and writing, just
came back from the Far East and I will be on my way to Harvard in
continuation of that and to do a lecture, a presentation, on poetry of
the cosmos. I am focusing on Coleridge, the 19th century poet of
romanticism and mysticism, Rabinadrath Tagore, the Indian Renaissance
poet who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1913....; he was also
into mysticism.... and a Nigerian poet of my generation and a doctoral
product of Uniben, the recently late Ezenwa-Ohaeto, our poet of the
night masquerade and of mystical propinquities. I am bringing together
three “common-wealth” poets of different, “disparate” ages, times,
generations, countries and continents. The three poets incidentally were
distinguished critics and theorists of literature, among other things
and other aspects of their creative arts and acts. I am interrogating
their cosmic arts and acts essentially, but mainly from the perspective
of theory. Obviously, Ezenwa-Ohaeto is the least known of the three, for
obvious reasons…. I am obviously also by-passing my primary and
secondary school years…. The point is that I have come a long way
through precocity, hard, honest work and luck…. I never had the
misfortune of missing or repeating any class through school fees problem
or through failure or through illness or any misfortune and other
events that stopped many candidates from doing promotion examinations or
from finishing properly and without break, without interruption…. Since
I started school in the sixties I never broke continuity up to Ph. D.
level. As I am saying this I can picture several of my class-mates and
even seniors who fell by the way-side. And I NEVER cut corners and will
never cut corners…. If this answer satisfies you, please we can move on
to something else…. I’m racing against time…., as you are aware....
Presently three out of 36 states are under the state of emergency, what are your views on this?
A
system that promotes injustice always faces what we are facing now. A
system where the majority will always care less about what happens to
the minorities will get to where we are now. President Goodluck Jonathan
is from the Niger Delta. He is an Ijaw by tribe. Why do I say so? When
the so-called militants started the Itsekiri and Ijaw war, government
failed to do what was expected of it as at then.
Let us look at
history, remotely or otherwise, of the present situation. Believe it or
not, the current situation started as a war over the location of a local
government headquarters in Itsekiri- land. As the government failed to
live up to its responsibilities of securing lives and properties,
Itsekiris were killed and their properties destroyed and burnt and
nothing happened to the perpetrators of the horrors. With horrifying
events the under-belly of the tiger was exposed and they discovered how
weak government was, or so, they and everybody thought, which eventually
led to more mayhem and further mayhem and Itsekiri, a minority of
Nigeria’s ethnical minorities, was at the butt of it all. Nothing
meaningful was done by government to halt the pain and pang of my
people.
At this point all kinds of demands, kidnapping, arson and
what- have-you (or should I say what had-you?) were what were. Of course
the rest are bad history. But at the end of the day leaders of the
gangsters were turned into billionaires in the name of nonsensical
amnesty. They are now guards of oil pipelines. Now the hen has come home
to roost with the emergence of Boko Haram. Unfortunately for this
country, they have more networks and hawks outside Nigeria; they are
also more in population. They have been unleashed on hapless citizens
because of the PDP injustice after the death of Yar’Adua. Accept or not
the logic of the North, as per the PDP zoning formula, the presidency
ought to have gone back to the North. But clearly the PDP is not a party
of people of honour. And I detest them for this, personally speaking.
The lack of honour exhibited by the party’s big wigs is a major reason
for our current quagmire. And Lord Jonathan himself has not helped
matters. If he was patient enough to wait truly for his time Boko Haram
would not be grazing the land, at least in the way we now witness, at
least not in the current scale. Furthermore, he has carried himself far
more as an Ijaw president than as the president of Nigeria. He even does
not see himself as the president of the Niger Delta. So in what ways is
he different from our former presidents and heads of state? He has
demonstrated far worse examples to Nigerians than anybody else. And many
of his Ijaw people and other political hangers-on have not helped
matters. But everything must begin and end on his desk, if you know what
I mean. Every now and then the rules change on his presidential table
with goal posts shifting again and again. If the PDP were sincere many
things that are happening today won’t have happened at all. Some say
that the North wants to Islamize Nigeria as per Boko Haram’s propaganda.
If you believe that you will believe anything. Such a statement and
similar ones must be seen and understood as diversionary statements,
which are nothing but terrorist propaganda from the group. To Islamize
us, to Islamize Nigeria, is not the group’s absolute mission from what I
have gathered from my research so far and from my genuine Northern
friends and colleagues’ information at my disposal…. I won’t say more
than this. We all have eyes; we all have nostrils; we all have ears; we
all have tongues; we all skins. Let us wait for the waitable, and for
how the state of emergency play will out itself. As I have stated
several times in other forums, everything passes. But one important
thing I wish to reiterate here is that the hen has come home to roost. I
said it a long time ago in my Tribune column that whatever Lord
Jonathan is doing now to cage Boko Haram is too late in coming. It
appears to me to be the last kick of a dying horse. Or the last gasp of a
dying fish or of a drowning man. Lord Jonathan is a man of the river as
I am. He ought to get my meaning. If we don’t know the way of horses we
know the way of fishes and the way of swimming men in our mangroves. If
Boko Haram people surrender now or ever at all to him, I will not utter
anything again pertaining to…. The rest is silence…. After all, I am
not a pipe-line billionaire guard nor an amnesty panel member nor even a
presidential busy-body or a presidential mis-adviser.
A few months from now Nigeria will be 100 years old from the amalgamation of 1914; what is your message on this, prof, sir?
Nigeria
must not disintegrate. Nigeria must not go the way of India, of a
divided India. We must never have a divided Nigeria. Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Afganistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka were all parts of an undivided
India. But they are different countries today, to the great discomfiture
of many people, great patriots, of the Far East. Those divided Indian
people, erstwhile Indian peoples, perhaps a better way of putting it are
the real burning spheres of the world today, which would not have
happened in the present scale in an undivided India. As for us in
Nigeria, a leader is coming that will give war to those who want war,
and peace to those who need peace. And Nigeria will remain one. Boko
Haram will surrender to him anytime he comes, but after a battle that is
the battle. Even my brothers from the creeks, sharks of war from the
creeks, will equally concede to him. He who is coming is unlike anyone
who has occupied our rock of power, of authority and of government. His
rock shall cease to be Aso Rock. His rock shall be called the Rock of
God. All things of the bush and of hollow men presently practised in
that place of places founded by the gap-toothed one shall cease to be in
God’s Rock. Only men of destiny, men who know the deep, the masters and
mystics, prophets of truth know and understand the message you want me
to give. They are watching what many would-be breakers of our country
are doing. Eventually there shall be stability brought to Nigeria by
bringers of stability. Book Haram will not surrender. They will keep
changing their modus operandi. But everything will fall into place soon.
The demons in power shall soon over-reach themselves. And we shall get
the real leader Nigeria needs. Forget what the lying plagiarists are
saying.
Many people are saying Hausas have ruled for so long. What
I can assure you is that the leader who is coming, whether from the
North, Kwale, Isoko, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Benin, Igbo or Yoruba, will give us
the Nigeria of our dream. Jonathan is a disappointment, a disaster. I
will call him Lord no more; I think he is presiding in a very satanic
rock of mis-power and mis-governance. When the new leader emerges, he
will not operate from Aso Rock but from God’s Rock, as I have already
stated. Then Satanism will be exorcised and uprooted from their thrones
of horror. And then we shall experience the politics of peace and of
progress.
How would you assess the academia vis-à-vis the Nigerian project?
I
am engaging currently in a study which I am not in a hurry to bring to
an end. It is tentatively called “The Nigerian Scholar.” Some of these
issues will crop up. I want to dissect the minds of Nigerian scholars,
not necessarily conventional academics alone, especially those who
hanker after positions, men and women who seek positions, who remind me
of Indian scholars and leave their academic pursuits, and who also are
responsible for Nigeria’s problems, who pretend to be contributing what
they need to be contributing as scholars to solve Nigeria’s problems
when in truth they only are mainly in government to eat what they can
eat…. mere position seekers to boost their ego-less egos. If they call
the bluff of most of these rascals in government many of these problems
would have been solved. Of course, some of them in government are
genuinely in government, but are eventually overwhelmed by events and
experiences therein. Generally, the majority of those who chose to be in
government, what did they make out of it than to steal? But those who
genuinely want to help won’t find a space as the terrible ones among
them won’t allow them to operate. It becomes more difficult for them as
they are not allowed to pull out in their own terms, and coming back to
the academia becomes even more difficult. Why should we leave our
callings? Leave politics for politicians because if scholars leave the
academia, scholarship will die. And naturally that will affect my
grand-children, your children and your grand-children and the future of
our great country.
You are resident in Benin, you have been
consistently opposed to the state executive governor, Comrade
Oshiomhole, what do you have against such a popular choice?
I
don’t wish to say this, but Comrade Oshiomhole has not hidden the fact
that he is a model governor, who everybody should look up to as a model
to be copied or to be praised or both. This is an erstwhile labour
leader. I thought such a man should live up to his reputation as a man
of truth or of integrity or of honour or all of the above. But the
recent certificate scandal, the albatross hanging around his neck or
whatever part of his body, has made me to have a re-think about the
man’s reputation. I am constrained to say he is not a truthful man that I
thought he was.
I belong to the academia, I am a university
person, who cherishes a conservative academic system of purity in which
students and staff must leave above board, a system that should not
tolerate cheating and fraud of whatever kind or colour, a system which
must reject and punish any student who gets/got admitted into it with
forged entry certificates, at any point in time. All such students and
their collaborators, once we discover them, must be led out of the
portal of our citadel of learning. Even when we discover after their
graduation that they cheated to get into the system, we still take
measures to sanction them in our bid to purify our temple. Show your
certificate and you went to court, you went on appeal. If he told us
that he did not go to this or that school, or that he was self-taught,
if he was honest enough in laying claims to what he laid claims or did
not lay claims to, I wouldn’t have uttered a word. And of course the
court hasn’t cleared him yet. Please show your certificate and you are
dancing around. I am concerned as a member of the society of truthful,
fearless and courageous academics who believe that some things should be
done right. Set good examples for others to follow.
Recently an
education minister in Germany had to resign because she was accused by
her university of plagiarism, of stealing other people’s work in her
doctoral thesis which she “wrote” many years back. She headed to court,
but for integrity’s sake and in order not to contaminate further her
office, she resigned first. That is the norm if you are a modern leader.
Justice demands it, fairness demands it, morality demands it and
integrity demands it, let us know the correct position even if an
accusation or an allegation is frivolous. Oshiomhole whom many know, the
man whose modus operandi is ever changeless, if he has what he claims
to have, would have gone to the press and published the same for the
world to see. And all the bill-boards in Benin-City and elsewhere in Edo
State would advertise his claims. His “comrade” city-buses would also
have painted them as worthy advertisements for the masses to see. So
that was and is still my concern/motive.
Again I have since seen
him as a man without an ideology. A governor with an ideology will not
do what he is doing a governor who possesses a firm ideology of
straightness will not do what he is doing. He claims to be working in
terms of physical development and provision of necessary infrastructure,
but at what price? The Edo worker is over-burdened by taxation. When
Oshiomhole was a labour leader, things he is doing now, he wouldn’t have
accepted them. How many retired workers, including civil servants and
teachers, have been paid their gratuities? How many of them are getting
their pensions regularly as and when due after devoting the best parts
of their lives to Edo State? Go and ask many okada riders on the road
and you will hear them say, “Lucky na him fall our hands, na him make
Oshiomhole dey shine as an actor” (meaning “Lucky failed us and
Oshiomhole capitalized on that to deceive us”). Many okada-riders who
initially were ready to die for him now know better. That is my concern.
That is my concern. That is my concern. That is my motive also.
The
man is a bundle of contradictions. And if perchance you find my
submission on him in this interview contradictory, please you must blame
it on this intimidating character of contradiction.
As an ASUU
leader you should be working with the comrade governor. At what point
did you discover he is not what you think, or not what you thought?
Oshiomhole
may not remember, but when our ASUU former leader, Dr. Dipo Fashina on a
Labour Day invited our branch and some other branches to felicitate,
solidarity-wise, with Oshiomhole-led NLC in Lagos, my chairman, Dr.
Uyi-Ekpen Ogbeide, secretary, Dr. Austin Moye and myself, then the
vice-chairman went to Lagos. But prior to the rally, we went to the
labour house in Yaba to see Oshiomhole. The man was talking all through
without allowing anybody else to contribute to the on-going topic, even
when he was not hitting gold. He was enjoying his reputation as a
fabulous NLC guru. That was my first and only encounter with him. And I
told my chairman that he was a wrong “comrade” and a wrong man. He
seemed to me somebody not to be trusted. I saw through him during that
encounter. He struck me as somebody who would dump anybody after using
him/her to get to his destination. Of course, Uyi-Ekpen made a case for
him and said rightly that I should not jump into conclusion on that
singular encounter. But I have one gift which can penetrate things and
people most of the time. I have been waiting for “comrade” to prove me
wrong ever since, till date.
Again, look at the recent local
government elections that have proved him right and also proved me
right. They have proved him right that he is not what people thought him
to be. And they have proved me right that, yes, that my perception of
him must remain what it gave me of him since that singular encounter
recalled above. He is proving wrong the English saying that one swallow
does not make a summer. We are familiar with the one-man-one-vote
slogan of nonsense that purportedly produced him in the last Edo
gubernatorial elections. Did he live to the sweet slogan in the local
government elections? He never allowed it because it was a slogan of
nonsense to his ears. The PDP lords in Edo and Abuja must be enjoying
their bite and taste of him now. They must be enjoying “comrade’s”
peculiar selectorate model that respects not the ballot boxes of the
electorate. Mind you, some of my friends and friends of my friends are
beneficiaries of this Oshiomhole model, but all that is wrong is wrong
and will always be wrong. We must reject it regardless of the
beneficiaries, and regardless of whose ox is gored.
But the people
are happy with him especially with road constructions and other
infrastructural development, or are you in the pay role of his opponents
as it is being rumoured?
Oh yes, people say he is doing roads,
but how many years is it taking him to build a three-kilometre stretch
or slightly more of roads? But as I said above, at what price? And why
wait till the rains are here before doing this and half and half?
Regarding the second part of your question, Itsekiri wisdom teaches me
that you merely accuse yourself when you put up a defence when no
defence has been called for. Rumours have no place in my dictionary of
honesty and of honour. So let the rumour-peddlers peddle their rumours
of blackmail. But I must answer you properly. A past student of mine,
who has a doctorate in Law and who is close to the Governor has
disabused the Governor’s mind on that score. I believed him when he
confirmed to me that the governor believed him when he gave him my
run-down when the governor broached the subject to him. In fact, some
persons in the governor’s circle of circles thought that some PDP chaps
gave me millions to do my duty to my conscience because many journalists
and scholars do exactly what their sick minds believed that I was doing
for money, especially when others had been cowed or bought or both.
And not a few there were who also thought that General Charles
Airiavbere gave me millions. No, a capital no, I say. I did not like
what they, I mean his PDP people and fellows, did to him for whatever
reason, but I did not say anything when the General questioned
Oshiomhole’s qualification to stand for the gubernatorial election. And I
observed that the accused behaved suspiciously. Some of the reasons
stated above were also at the back of my mind. And to boot, he refused
to enter the witness-box to be a witness to his own case and cause. The
General is a stranger to me even though I did my check on him right from
his time in Washington and before then. Forget my discovery, but I felt
the need to talk for a man unfairly treated and done in by his PDP
kingpins. Even a devil deserves fair and just treatment before we visit
him with his/her just recompense. One more thing: I have friends in the
two parties of PDP and ACN but none interfered one way or another with
my position and conviction, although, I must say it now, one or two of
them in the governor’s employ no longer look in my direction. But what
does it matter? It is Oshiomhole I know and whom I had met once during
my efficient ASUU days. Incidentally, as I have said a number of times
elsewhere, all the major parties are the same, they are not different
from each other, they have the same demons so I am not in any camp as it
were. I am an academic, a writer-scholar, a public intellectual, a
journalist who must speak truth to power and who must talk to our people
and partake in their pains.
As a poet and critic I need to do my
duty. I don’t belong to the pool of academics that hanker after
political appointments. I have never and will never solicit for any
appointment. I will never ask for or solicit gratification from anybody,
from the Oshiomholes and Ariavberes to do my duty for my people. Expose
me if I am liable. Descend on me if you find me to be a liar on this
score. Catch me red-handed and un-red-handed and disgrace me, humiliate
me if you find me liable. Don’t spread rumours O you men and women and
people and fellows of mean miens! I enjoy what I am doing. I enjoy my
teaching, and I enjoy my writing. Just as everybody has their talents,
luck and gift, I have mine, and they belong in the academia, scholarship
and creativity, and journalism. No political appointment is better and
can be better than what I am doing. But, of course, if there is absolute
need for me to serve in this or that capacity I may consider it but on
the terms that will do justice and honour to my conviction and people.
But I LOVE my job despite my financial poverty I LOVE my job.
How in your opinion can the academia help the country out of the rot as the recent JAMB results witnessed the worst ever?
What
is happening now, what the larger society is witnessing, is not new. I
saw it coming long ago, when students that were not fit to be university
students in the real sense of the word started gaining admission into
Nigerian universities, I mean students who could not even write their
names properly yet they had fabulous results. We know what happens as
mercenaries and leaked question papers are rife everywhere outside
there. A student once told me that he never did JAMB, he and others just
went there and paid some officials to get their names posted with
fantastic results. He confided in me. Oh Jesus! If I can criticize
others I will also do the same to my immediate society.
Sometime
ago some of my students failed so woefully in their exams that I was
bloodied, but I refused to compromise standard and I have always refused
to do so, I being trained as a traditional scholar who must nourish the
positive and nourishing virtue of strictness. But things are really so
bad now that some elements out there in the wider society are
cushioning the evil in our temples of learning. Whether we like it or
not we must produce students, we are told in the universities, which
shouldn’t be, regardless of the monumental decay in the system created
by those out there lording it over our lives. What I am saying here is
that the university system is a part of the Nigerian society. You can
expect anything. In several universities so much and so little have
happened in terms of flushing out bad elements. I must give praise,
however, to the present Vice Chancellor of Uniben for certain actions he
has taken in getting rid of these elements, including colleagues whom
he has kicked out for various reasons in his attempt to uphold the
integrity of the institution. I have recently coined a term for
Professor Oshodin’s good work in this direction. The rotten eggs he has
thrown out after fair and frank and transparent demonstrations from
appropriate bodies in the institution, I have labelled Oshodin Positive
(OP); those who escape the Oshodin crucible and furnace I have labelled
Oshodin Negative (ON).
Generally, the central and state
governments must take the blame pertaining to the near collapse in our
universities and schools. They must be asked how many percent they are
allocating to education. Do you know the population of students we have?
Go to lecture halls and you will be shocked. Go to their hostels and
see how they live like animals. At times when the students don’t do well
we show them mercy because many of them don’t eat well and they can’t
eat well as their parents either don’t have incomes or they are poorly
paid. Lack of money has led some of the girls to sell themselves and
honour for money while the boys do all kinds of things to earn a living.
Most of them are not really students as they don’t have necessary text
books which they need. They cannot afford them, and cannot also afford
to photocopy pertinent materials prescribed for them from appropriate
sources. They also cannot afford to print them from the internet. There
is much poverty everywhere, and students in the universities are in for
trouble, bad trouble.
Lots of things are wrong within the system.
There is also the issue of “blocking” (bribing) of lecturers as some of
the wealthy among the students don’t go to school at all. They play the
bad game of truancy. But there are cases, I hear, about some demented
lecturers who demand raw cash from students in more than several
universities. There is also alleged to be in vogue what a Nigerian
columnist resident in the US has aptly called “sexually transmitted
degrees”(“STD”). Of course, I’m referring to the Nigerian novelist, Okey
Ndibe. But as bad as some of us may be, as some colleagues may be or
actually are, it is still tolerable here in our academia as we don’t
have demons here yet, as it is out there (in the larger society) where
the real demons are, as exemplified by typical Nigerian politicians.
They are the ones who have placed us where we are today, with the police
and the judiciary as their comrades in impunity.
Maybe we should
take Edo State as a test case. They keep playing games as they play
politics with the minimum wage which they pay with one hand and take
away with another hand nearly completely through obnoxious taxation.
Recently, a lecturer, a professor, who is in University of Uyo, Akwa
Ibom State on sabbatical leave informed me that he was shocked to see
how much was deducted from his income, an act which he said does not
happen in Akwa Ibom State. You must know where to place the blame when
some lecturers resort to doing all kinds of dirty things to augment
their pay.
As a labour leader, what has been the relationship between the comrade governor and labour in your university?
This
is a hard question because I am really no longer a mainstream ASUU
leader in the sense you want me to understand it. But I will ever remain
a quintessential ASUU man and personage. I will answer your question
directly by stating as follows: There is an allegation that recently an
arm of the University of Benin visited Oshiomhole to dialogue with him
on the need to reduce his highly vexatious taxation of our incomes, and
he told those who went to him in an arrogant manner to remove the
institution from Edo State if they were not ready to pay the tax as it
is! Though I am yet to confirm that, I won’t be surprised because of his
antecedents as my first and only encounter with him revealed several
years ago. The man can be haughty. He is a creation of the media, a
wrong creation of the media and of civil societies whom he apparently
has been deceiving. If he has an ideology worthy of the name he won’t do
what he is doing to us university people and other workers in Edo State
tax-wise. We went through hell to negotiate the lousy pay from
government, and Mr. Labour-Leader-of-note is crushing us with his
crushing taxation. I am not trying to damage him. My criticism of him is
to let him turn into a new leaf and stop deceiving the people who have
seen him through thick and thin. Curiously, several of my colleagues who
were 100 percent for him are too pained to utter a word on what their
hero has turned out to be. Anytime they see me they blush uncomfortably,
and I am always sensible not to broach the subject. I know their pain
and disappointment. But sooner or later his attack jackals will be after
me for speaking my mind and the truth as I know it in response to your
question. But why should that bother me? I don’t want to say other
things here that can’t be published. It is an open sesame that President
Goodluck Jonathan and other PDP big wigs are behind him, for a reason
we all know.
What is the opposition in Edo State doing? Can’t the
opposition help the people by making him change through robust debates
of issues as they come up?
Today PDP people are licking
their wounds in Edo State. The locust years of Lucky are stuck in the
collective memory of the people. The opposition cannot but be feeble.
Besides, the majority of the politicians are cash-and-carry politicians.
And the masses are happy with what they perceive as the infrastructural
development Oshiomhole has brought them. They easily forget or pretend
not to know that the ideology-less “comrade” was a Lucky Igbinedion
brought-in to prevent his foes at the other end of PDP from getting to
government house. Without speaking in codes, no debate, robust or not
robust, will suddenly ignite the people to reality. Infrastructural
facilities are meant to be enjoyed through the possession of decent
living wages and incomes. In the dominantly civil service state of Edo,
this is certainly not the case, and languishing tax-burdened workers and
people will wait for manna to fall from the sky rather than to be
persuaded by any debate to the contrary. Oshiomhole seems to be the
current opium in the landscape of Edo. Recently teachers were booted out
of service.... I learnt he has called them back now.... He also booted a
perm sec out for some flimsy reason. I debated the teachers’ plight in
my Tribune column, but what did that matter to the people?
Couldn’t they have been found wanting?
Who
could have been found more wanting than Oshiomhole with the certificate
albatross hanging on his neck? He can’t run away from it. A permanent
secretary was shown the way out, as I learnt, because he gave out the
king’s square for a paltry sum for an entertainment event. I never
believed the allegation or rumour or whatever name they called it. But
how could he send away a man who had put in so many years in service
just like that? He just kicked him out like that. Matter finish. No
respect for any law and for the man’s fundamental human rights? Also, he
brought back a retired soldier he recently embarrassed publicly and
fired in a similar manner and has made him a permanent secretary well
above core civil servants. What a rough and haughty “comrade”! What a
governor of the people! Please don’t ask me anything, any quiz on this
our Oshiomhole again.
What is your opinion about what is playing out between PDP and the Rivers State governor, Rt. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi?
I
don’t wish to get myself involved in any quarrel of demons. Go to
Rivers State and see what Amaechi is doing to university lecturers. I am
referring to the state university of science and technology, I am sure
they are still on strike now due to the man’s illegal and draconian
laws. He is not who we thought he was. This is very painful, because
this is a man who by his training should show tremendous sympathy to all
kinds of people. He is a student of the humanities, a student of
English Studies who should show adequate regard to all beings in
creation. Leave me out of the tragic dance of demons that I don’t want
to get involved in. But it is to the advantage of the Nigerian masses in
the long run. Unfortunately though, they have their demonic tactic of
closing ranks. Yet it must be our wish that this will lead to their
untoward end. Again, they merely have revealed to us that they have been
both artful and artless riggers of our past elections. Governors who
could not conduct a rig-less election in their small conclave! Nigeria
of super-demons, we must hail thee day by day.
How do you assess the performance of your state governor and kinsman, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan and his stewardship in Delta State?
That
is another kettle of fish entirely. I am saying this with some feeling
of reluctance. Clearly, you want to trap me. But I refuse to be caught
in your snare. Dr. Uduaghan, academically speaking, experience-speaking,
should be the best or ought to be the best governor to have come out of
that state, he being a medical doctor who served the state in different
capacities before he unexpectedly became his party’s governorship
candidate and governor eventually. Be that as it is, to whom much is
given, so much is expected. Perhaps the legal battles he has been
through, no governor in the history of Nigeria has gone through them.
The court cases he waded through, I’m not sure if they are over yet, I
sympathize with him. From the scenario I have just painted I’m sure that
you may guess my turn of mind. Yet I must answer as follows: like all
of them, I mean his fellow governors, he has encouraged and promoted
mediocrity in Delta State. But that has not taken away the fact that
there are some good guys working for and with him. But they are very
few and can’t make a difference as we want. But someone like Uduaghan
with his pedigree should frown at mediocrity. Nobody has gone through
what he has gone through. As a cautious human being, based on the
experience of his immediate predecessor, he is trying to be more careful
and he tends to do things that he would have done without qualms with
the characteristic mien of the typical characters in our folk tales who
look intently before they leap. But I am not happy with him and his
method. Yet he has my sympathy because nobody has gone through what he
has been simply because he is from the tiny Itsekiri minority. He is
even too saintly fearful to do things for his people, which is a
horrible sin, I must tell you. I am not telling him to be a President
Jonathan who has turned his presidency into an Ijaw ware-house, but Dr.
Uduaghan’s Itsekiri people need equal treatment with other ethnical
groups in Delta State. The medical doctor governor has clearly not
diagnosed his kinsmen’s ailment properly. He has failed them badly. This
is the truth, whether or not he likes to hear it. I don’t know what
other people, including your fellow Ukwani people, think of or about
him, but what I have rendered is my personal opinion which many of my
kinsmen will endorse. Am I in your trap after all? Certainly not, I dare
clap for myself. But let me add finally: if Emmanuel was a Catholic, I
would have advised him to go to confession on account of his neglect of
his people. But he is a Baptist.
What should be done to retrace our steps as a people on the issue of morality?
I
belong to an ancient and very illustrious family, a royal family in
Warri Kingdom. The first thing I was told, as far as I can remember as I
getting out of my teens, was that I should never do anything
unwholesome to drag the family name in the mud. And the training we had
in our growing-up years was to be satisfied with what we had and would
have. Contentment was a lesson in morality we imbibed very early in life
in our homestead. Do that which you think you must do, have your focus
and have your ability or capability to do the best you possibly can do
to fetch yourself happiness. Don’t copy the other man because he has
one, two,.... ten houses, or because he has this or that. How he got the
houses or this and that you do not know. Follow your path, and follow
your destiny. When you have this at the back of your mind you won’t go
wrong. Wealth is something but everything is not wealth. My father told
me that money is a traveller, that is why the man that is down today in
the morning could be up again today in the evening or tomorrow; and the
man that is up today may go down today’s evening or tomorrow’s morning.
If God does not wish you to get it, no matter how you try you will fail.
Don’t be a thief. He also told me that there comes a time in a man’s
life when he must live above board, but he urged me to live above board
all the time even though he made me aware that as a human-being I could
not get perfection, no matter how hard I try to get it. But if one is
doing terrible things a time definitely would come in one’s life when
one must turn into a new leaf. The reason is because we are not perfect,
but we must crave to live well. My life is guided by this attitude.
This is my morality. I always try to live well. And wish too to die
well.
I have been trained in a way that you can’t entice me. Give
me the world, I won’t take it if it means that you are giving it to me
in order to do something against my honour and conviction. If it is not
right I won’t do it. Everybody can’t be like me, anyway because I am
what I am through my upbringing, through my readings. I am satisfied
with my small world. Those who try to steal as much as they can will
have their third generations blow the money away. The law of retributive
justice never fails. What is your morality? I have given you aspects of
mine.
I will never strive to be you. I will remain myself till eternity. I believe herein lies my happiness. What is your morality?
It’s a pleasure and a delight talking to you at this length, prof.
Thank you, great quiz master. You are very entertaining yourself.
Today I’m sharing a guest post from author, Bill Treasurer. Find out how you can win a free copy of his newest book Leaders Open Doors at the end of the post. 
