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.
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.
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