Even while down, there is some information that would razzle you up when heard. So, the management of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) has the audacity to turn intelligence and intellectualism upside down by inviting FCT Minister Nyesom Wike to the prestigious Great Ife campus to come speaking as a “Distinguished Personality?!”
Distinguished kini?!!
If the madness to be witnessed on OAU campus on Thursday June 5th is anything to go by, one should expect the same management to bring MCOluomo next as “Distinguished Personality.”
When I shared the poster with a Leader of mine who has great respect for Great Ife, he simply responded by saying “OAU is finished!” His understatement is covered by the recent mass protests on Campus over how about four sets of students have been paying session by session for ID cards but the management never produced the cards.
I was also on that campus, and I can say that even a village setting is far better. From Angola Hall to Fajuyi, there were bushes competing with the roads and hostels. So unkempt, the campus is really a shadow of its old self.
But the management has always been like this really. I remember they tried hard in 2005 to bring Babangida to campus, but failed after students uproars. They ended up bringing the then Attorney general, Bayo Ojo the year after. Students Union Leaders roundly dealt with Ojo intellectually and he was disgraced off the campus.
The same management, even when they increased fees abitrarily, also brought former President Jonathan to campus in 2016, he was pelted out the campus with sachets of water!
Elements like Nyesom Wike believe they have turned Nigeria into a zoo,and they can go anywhere and do anyhow. He has “defeated” even the great Ijaws in Rivers and has been boasting around, of his defeating them. I am sure Wike is well abreast of the great legacies of Great Ife and how we don’t take nonsense from elements of the Nigerian ruling class overtime. But Wike must have shunned that, and with the assurances of the management that the students Union is already pocketed, the Rivers and Abuja “Bulldozer” is all set to put our beloved Great Ife in the bag too?!!!
The lecture is allegedly on teaching Great Ife students, lecturers and the community on how to be a “loyal party leader” in the present political spaces. What sort of irritating and ironic lecture is Wike coming to deliver on OAU campus? How much have we degenerated to this??
By now, if the Dr. Bush-led Students Union is actually conscious and abreast of the Great Ife traditions, there should be a statement and position of the union on Wike’s embarrassing lecture by now.
Great Ife students should care about Wike storming our campus to teach us the shenanigans of his brazen and open pocketing of the PDP for the benefit of a failed regime. Wike is busy demolishing and grabbing people’s lands all over Abuja, whereas the FCT remains in a mess of growth and developments.
So, wetin Wike wan teach us at Great Ife. Will he bring his band of pipers and be talking down on everyone at Oduduwa Hall as he is wont to doing overtime? The same Wike paid his paper pipers and they were insulting the great Femi Falana all over the press. Falana was one of the best Publicity Secretaries of the Great Ife Students Union, and has distinguished himself as a great lawyer. Whereas, Wike never appeared on court for once as a lawyer, worse than a Charge-and-bail Barrister.
For my generation, by now, Wike would have rejected the coming to OAU campus. And if he is hell bent on coming; the Jonathan measure of the 2016 generation is a greater option. We the oppressed need to be facing our oppressors with our doses of the hard truths each time we have the opportunities. I urge the current Great Ife Students Union to define the standards of their own generations and ultimately keep the Great Ife legacies as indomitable and historic as ever.
For the failed Professor Bamire-led management asking Wike to come teaching us about party legacies, Fela Kuti’s words remain evergreen; “Teacher, teacher…don’t teach us nonsense!!!”
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