28 Oct 2009 |
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UNN, Nebo and The Advertisement of Farce Nigeria’s administrative officers-elected or not have a great way of masking their inadequacies. Hardly do you hear them say a word or two about their failures- and there are too many of them. No. all you hear them mischievously advertise is what they like to call “giant strides”. Others like to call theirs transformation. Extensive media commentaries and some of the best PR practitioners are mostly employed in trumpeting these often difficult to verify achievements. Even at that, they still are hardly content with just talking about these. Beautiful graphics must be added in advertising the messianic efforts of the officeholders. Is it not baffling that with all the roads being advertised as having been either renovated or rehabilitated across the country, many a Nigerian roads are ranked amongst the worst on the planet? Schools-primary, secondary and what have you always are being fixed and new ones built; we are always being told; again you ask: why are the unfortunate kids who populate these public schools learn under tree shades or leaking roofs at best? Laboring the obvious would do us little good, no such achievements are recorded and in few places where little efforts are being made, what lies beneath is a rot of greater proportion. The prelude above serves to offer a very crucial window to what the state of things at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka has been in the last couple of years. The Vice Chancellor before the present Prof. O.C Nebo cared very less about the welfare of the average student. He and his team spared no effort at silencing any voice of dissent. They, through brutal interference and dictatorial posturing effectively removed the Students’ Union leadership as a factor in the scheme of things in the school. Making the SUG in the schools dysfunctional I learnt was a script Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo of eternal infamy handed down to the Vice Chancellors while he led the nation through what has been one of her most inglorious moments- it has never been too rosy for Nigeria, let’s be clear on that; but Obasanjo took the odious record to newer heights. We shall not allow that to distract us. If anyone acted the OBJ script to perfection, Prof O. C Nebo was. He methodically sowed needless crises into the rank and file of the Nsukka SUG. The SUG elections he organized while he held sway as VC were very similar to those Mr. Maurice Iwu at INEC served the nation on a grander scale in 2007 and would most likely repeat in coming elections. Slight difference does however exist- while candidates wrongly disqualified by Iwu ran to the courts to clear their names, Nebo swiftly connived with school security operatives and administrative officers to keep those he maliciously disqualified to make way for favored candidates under strict security surveillance. Any form of protest from those served this injustice is a sure path to suspension from the school on trumped up charges. You can be sure those they often select would be amongst the most obnoxious characters in school that can never raise a voice against any of the many anti-students policies they enact. A good example in this regard is a certain Kingsley Okechukwu who Nebo stationed as the Union president between 2008 and 2009. Ask any student from Nsukka how this moral wreck of a fellow ended. It’s on record that he reduced the position to his puny mentality through many shameful conducts. Forcing innocent girls to sleep with him is just one of his many atrocities. Is not curious that all the union presidents that worked during the period in view are from Enugu state? The present VC- Prof Barth Okolo- who I reliably gathered that Nebo handpicked has fared even worse. The egregious SUG election he conducted last June almost set the school ablaze before his paranoid recourse to police and military officers to quell the insurrection that did serve to advertise his incompetence. If he was sure of himself, why did he alert to security officers to intimidate students who were angered into protesting the rape of their collective will? In the end, the unpopular and indecisive fellow they anointed whose name I can’t even recall has been sworn in to carry on as union president. If you are in doubt as to what shape confusion has, all you need do is to observe the man who parades himself as the SUG president in Nsukka presently closely. What interest has Profs Nebo and Okolo in students’ politics? Why are they denying many agile minds a chance for self expression in leadership which the union ordinary should offer? I certainly may not be able to answer correctly but here’s what one may infer through their actions: their compromising their office by disgracefully conniving with a few wretched officials within and outside the confines of the university (I learnt Enugu state government officials are often involved in the criminal process that lead to the sham that passes as election each year in Nsukka) to frustrate young students a chance at unionism fits perfectly into their agenda of advertising farce as worthy achievements. They wouldn’t want to be disturbed by proactive union leaders who would always be quick to point at their shortfalls; who would likely raise a voice against their maladministration and horrific neglect of students’ welfare. I’ll give a few instances: for the five years Nebo reigned as the VC in UNN, adequate efforts were never made to make the students’ hostel- specially the male halls livable. Those who lived in Franco hostels in the past would be greatly scandalized at what has become of those places today. To begin with, the decision to officially keep six grown up boys in a room designed originally for two persons is manifestly wicked. See where undergraduates sleep in UNN and you are horrified at where those rightly and wrongly called the leaders of tomorrow are kept. This still would have been tolerable if minimum efforts were made at making the halls habitable. These hostels have no windows, the electric wirings are often poor and hence damage too frequently. The toilets and bathrooms rank amongst the most undesirable places under the sun. Ask anybody who should know. The cleaners- very underpaid work with little motivation hence they put in tiny efforts. Not for once did I see anyone cleaning the hostel surroundings. Till date, heaps of refuse pile around the hostels and it’s a big shame that this never attracted the attention of the authorities. Anyone who understands health issues would know the dangers of living around any of these places- Alvan, Eni Njoku and Mbanefo halls. With the continuous stench oozing from the dirty toilets, refuse heaps and burst sewage pipes, it becomes easy to why the students around these halls are regular guests at nearby chemist shops and hospital. Water supply is unsteady and majority take recourse to a certain water reservoir that well houses all kinds of disease vectors. With all the campaign against malaria, you would not believe it that no single mosquito net is in place in any of the male halls. In essence, what you have as students’ hostels could easily pass for abandoned madmen’s quarters. Zik’s Flat- a female hostel is almost collapsed and yet many persons are still being posted to this visible waiting-disaster. The cracks and the fallen roofs are well too obvious and yet are we to see efforts at renovation. Apart from the hostels, the classrooms represent another catastrophic failure of leadership at the highest level in UNN. The GS theatre halls aptly illustrate this. The seats are dismembered. The result: a hall that has a seating capacity of close to three hundred can no longer accommodate 50 persons seated. You now can imagine the number of students who stand up taking lectures. Students who make use of the laboratories have more awful tales to relate. The irony is that even with this unpleasant state of affairs, our students still are expected to perform well in exams. What has been related above is a well-known Nigerian story. It’s worse in other places some would quickly retort. True, education and life of students on our campuses are amongst the strongest proofs of the ill-will Nigerian leaders have towards the ordinary man. My worry is: why were these failures carefully shielded from the public all through the period Mr. Nebo’s achievements were being displayed (he erected new structures and made a few strides completing abandoned projects most importantly the multi-million naira library-he must be given due credit in these). One still thought it would have been more appropriate that we be reminded that in addition to bringing in a few great ideas to running a university system, that he made some unholy incursions into the affairs of the SUG- that left the union in its present comatose state. We could have been better served by knowing that he did less than enough to make things better for the students living in the hostels. On his part, Nebo could have been truer to his conscience if he had acknowledged that the security system he put in place promoted grave brutality and worrisome neglect of professionalism. Why did he fail to apologize when in 2006 he lied or perhaps allowed his officials to release a notice sending students home under the guise that the hostels were up for fumigation while no such effort was in place? Why did it not occur to him that students deserve a voice the run of proceedings in the school? Would it also be bad if he is to explain the role he played in foisting the new man who gradually is being unveiled as a kind of bigger disaster on the school just before leaving? Don’t we at least deserve the right to know who to hold responsible for the ugly events that are gradually unfolding in the school?
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