UNIVERSITY OF BENIN: THE TRAVAIL OF THE
36 — A THORN BEFORE A VICE-
CHANCELLOR’S EYES
.
Over five months — it is now time to call a
spade a spade. A farmer who seeks the
nourishment of its farm produces cannot
continue the unavailing appeasement of
mere mortal threateners, when the goddess
of rain projects bounties of infinite sacs.
.
The crisis submerging the department of
Foreign Languages, University of Benin, has
gotten to a pandemic junction, and it should
be treated as such. The results of 36
students are currently being withheld, in a
partial fulfillment of the Dr. Austin Moye's
verbal-recorded threat of academic
victimization. What was the crime of these
36 students? Simply put: they had the
effrontery to stand up against the authority of
the department, by signing a petition against
the department on the 1st of August, 2016.
What led to the petition? And what were its
demands?
.
At about 4:30 pm, the students of the
Department of Foreign Languages began to
converge at the University Staff School
(USS) — the venue of the scheduled Dinner/
Award Night of the Foreign Languages
Students’ Association (FOLSA). According to
the program of events, the students' dinner
was billed to commence by 4pm and was to
end by 8pm. But inevitably, one of the
logistical inadequacies that sometimes
threaten event planning manifested, and the
event — in the wisdom of the FOLSA
Executive Council — was to be forslowed for
an hour. However, this slight change in event
turned out a value for the students to make
exchange of pleasantries and to shower
torrents of compliments on their remarkable
outfits, while they yet happily await the
commencement of their Dinner.
.
But then, something alarming — which will
send a sudden wave of shock into the hearts
of not only the over eighty FOLSANS (Foreign
Languages students) but also invitees
present — happened! Mrs. Gloria Shuaibu —
a mere Staff Adviser of the Students'
Association — had pronounced an immediate
cancellation on the students' Dinner. The
decree was of Dr. Austin Moye — the Head of
Department — and the late commencement of
the dinner was the guiding thought of his
action, Mrs. Gloria Shuaibu claimed.
Notwithstanding, let me state here that: what
is most cultured is to begin an event right as
at when due, but when circumstance forbids
— and circumstance stubbornly warrant
durational extension — how should supposed
scholars manage such situation? Is it
through a resolve to cancellation?
.
However, the students knew the decree was
a joke. What right have lecturers to cancel a
dinner that was completely funded by
students’ hard earned money? Besides, what
will become of the fate of the varieties of
foods prepared? What about all of the
energies enacted by poor students through
the rehearsing of dance, drama, literal
recitals et cetera to be staged for the event?
What about the enacted energies of members
of the EXCO into the dinner, right from its
very beginning?
.
The Decree was a joke comparable to a man
who was invited to a wedding ceremony, but
ran pass the congregation, straight to the
altar, seized the ring-box: “I am protesting
against the late commencement of this rite!”
He shouted, as he clinched firmly to the ring-
box. But rather than breaking down laws and
order, what happened to this guest's
honourable option of simply leaving?
.
But, gradually, a lump of earth became a
mountain. The seemingly joke began to take
a malicious form, as Mrs. Gloria Shuaibu
alerted the security department of the
University of Benin, and those ones — the
very professional UNIBEN Police Force —
right from their headquarters, they cried
down sirens to the University Staff School;
the road leading from Saint Albert to Faculty
stood still. It was as if a notorious squad of
criminals were gathered at the University
Staff School, heavily armed with tankers of
petrol and trucks of matchboxes — very
determined to set the entire University
ablaze.
.
Perhaps, according to the orientation giving
to the UNIBEN security, a stranded gathering
of students — who had already been
humiliated, badly slighted, denied and
stripped off their fundamental human right to
dignity, and to peaceful association, by
lecturers who ought to have known better —
is the definition of criminality, because upon
invading the venue, the UNIBEN security men
displayed absolute bestiality. Their
consciences were murdered. Psychological
trauma and chaos were erupted, as they
forced and manhandled innocent students
out of the venue of the dinner — a venue
secured with the students’ sum of fifteen
thousand naira.
.
The missing of a phone belonging to a
student identified as Ibukunoluwa Sonaike is
still fresh in the memory of all. In another
case, those whose phones escaped missing
could not save their dinner dresses — they
either got ruptured or worn out beyound
repair. Ironically, these were men whose
responsibility it is to protect students against
aggression.
.
To make matters worse, while the students
pondered on the solution to the impasse and
the possible available options left, another
action — nurtured by insensibility, one
typical of the instinct of a condemned street
scoundrel — was let loosed. Mrs. Gloria
Shuaibu again! The overzealous
gentlewoman seized majority of the student's
items lined up for the dinner, ranging from
two hundred and fifty copies of students'
Magazines (chantecler), bottles of assorted
wines, caned drinks, to coolers of varieties
of food et cetera, into her vehicle, and
zoomed off, unconscionably. These were
items bought by the levying of #2,500 each
from the students.
.
I suggest the immediate invitation of the
renowned Professor Allen J. Frances to tell
the fettle of her cerebral neurocytes.
.
However, since rebellion against unfavorable
condition has been a major phenomenon to
man, right even from its early age, a fact
which explains — for instance, in our African
society — why a baby would not hesitate to
cry after being overpowered and fed pap,
which it heavily detests, little wonder the
counteraction of the students against the
uncouth conduct of the lecturers. A petition
was filled. Against the department. And while
its caption read: THE CANCELLATION OF
DINNER/AWARD NIGHT (SOIREE) OF THE
FOREIGN LANGUAGES STUDENTS’
ASSOCIATION (FOLSA) — an explanation to
why their dinner was canceled; an
explanation for the justification of their
subjection to ruthless treat; a reasonable
compensation for their loss; an immediate
repatriation of their properties illegally
carted away by the overzealous dame,
amongst others, were the demands of the
petition. But since the 1st of August — the
date of the petition's issuance — justice has
faced and has continue to face abrupt denial!
.
However, forty days after a total stalemate to
the petition — on the 9th of September, 2016
— a circular was issued to the students. It
was a notice of panel constituted by Prof.
Leo Otoide, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts.
PANEL TO INVESTIGATE THE
CANCELLATION OF DINNER/AWARD NIGHT
(SOIREE) OF THE FOREIGN LANGUAGES
STUDENTS' ASSOCIATION (FOLSA), the
circular read. But most regrettably, just as
the petition was deliberately delayed, for the
injection of frustration into the aggrieved
students, so was the fate of the Faculty
panel, which suffered forty more days of
dormancy before the students could be
invited for a hearing, on the 19th of October
2016.
.
The Professor A.O. Asagba-chaired panel
will end its investigation by telling the
students to await the panel's report through
the Faculty Dean, as soon as possible. But
the students will become Abikus, coming and
going through the Faculty Officer's door,
inquiring of the outcome of the panel, without
any headway. Days and weeks and months
will pass, and the students' helplessness will
somersault upon hopelessness, putting their
eyes in the sky, looking for where their
saviour lies.
.
The academic results will be pasted on the
notice board, but the column of the 36 will
read: RESULT WITHHELD. UNDERGOING
INVESTIGATION! And the implication? The
graduating victims would be denied an
access to clearance, holding onto their
peaceful exit from the university system,
while the second year victims, who ought to
leave in January for their year abroad
program, either at Togo or Badagry, might be
rendered incapacitated.
.
Many students will become frustrated in the
civilized medium of justice attainment. If to
get justice in a citadel of learning is like a
camel and a donkey dragging to pass
through a needle's eye, what does the
circular society holds for them? “Why should
justice linger for five months?” They will
query, and they will hiss. Their minds will
flashback to the 29th of July, and they will
remember the brutality of the Security and
they will say: “If we had assaulted them
back, the following week, a kangaroo panel
would have been constituted against us, and
by now, we would definitely have been
suspended for what they would have called a
breach of our affidavits of good conduct! But
now the assault is against us, who will give
us justice?”
.
Wilted by the uncertainty of justice, before
the very power which had placed them below
humans, and kept them in perpetual
servitude, the students will supplicate. But,
from Dr. Austin Moye — a regrettably tall
figure of one of the few still standing,
reputable, revolutionary and ideological
based union (ASUU), what will they get in
return for their pleas: “… Go and tell the world
that your HOD talked to you rudely. We have
started the war. You people have not seen
academic victimization!” (There is a voice
record, should the necessity for the
validation of this claim arises).
.
In the meantime however, let us turn from the
story behind this petition to its significance
to nation building — and this is where my
headache lies. Let me warn here, with all
modesty, that the ongoing victimization of
the 36 — in a sense of largeness — poses a
serious concern about our survival as
Nigerians, and, of course, about our
collective sense of civility amongst the
comity of nations because it is a matter that
threatens the democratic leaning of the
nation, as established by section 14,
subsection 1, of the 1999 constitution of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) —
it is a blatant violation of a people's
fundamental human right to peaceful
association, and to dignity — it is an
harbinger of anarchy. Above all — and of
most worrisome — it is a brutal prank
triggered by a battered sense of
unpatriotism, one closely fixed to the
crushing down of the very admirable courage
of the 36, thereby turning them to slaves,
deprived of volition on matters that concern
their existence.
.
Let us pause for a while and let us ask
ourselves some truthful questions: if
lecturers, noble men and women, who ought
to be the custodians and the impacters of
ethics and of civility — the most essential of
national development and of international
reputability — for the Master-Slave system of
the university system, shamefully reduced
themselves to oppressors of students, to
authors of confusion, and to architects of
thuggery, what therefore becomes the fate of
the country? And since every student is an
ambassador to the world, what becomes the
fate of humanity?
.
As a student of Education, I am placed on a
standard: TEACHERS ARE MODELED TO BE
MODELS. But what models — from lecturers
who demonstrate the most despicable of
brute force — can be unleashed to the
society? In Shuaibu and in Moye — as in Irma
Grese and in Hitler — we are offered no hope
of a better society — we are left with nothing
but a guaranteed generation of zombies —
otherwise, what society develops when its
youths are conditioned to keep quite in the
face of injustice, and to cower when their
rights are being trampled upon?
.
Standing up against injustice is the most
sacred of all heroic deeds. The action of the
36 is heroic, and as such — for the very love
of our nation — they should be treated with
the very smack befitting heroes, and not
villains. The 36 brings us a reminiscence of
the corrosive days of radical students’
unionism — days when students doggedly
defend just causes, by standing up against
every form of tyranny and every form of anti-
masses’ policy, such as the Structural
Adjustment Program (SAP), the Anglo-
Nigerian Defence Pact — that very deceptive
treaty which would have given the British
government the legal rights to establish a
military base in Nigeria. The 36 — should we
cut them in their primes or decorate them
with medals of kudos?
.
However, with this article, the travail of the
36 is placed before the very eyes of all. The
rot in a system unbarred before the world.
There are moments when silence is as
disastrous as the calamitous memory of
Hiroshima and of Nagasaki. That moment is
now. And as a matter of urgency, the Most
Revered Professor F.F.O. Orunwense must
pluck off the thorn before his eyes. It is most
dishonorable to be counted among infidels
on the wrong side of history.
.
Moreover, let me remind us that lecturers are
scholars, and the duty of scholars is to save
the society from gridlock — not to make a
compounding of it. For instance, one of the
most influential economists of the 20th
century and the founder of modern
macroeconomics, John Maynard Keynes,
developed an economic thought, during the
1930s, in an attempt to address the Great
Depression; a thought now popularly known
as Keynesianism. This is the dignifying
tiding of the lettered.
.
Amidst heavy military bombardment,
onslaught that did resulted to the
incarceration, or physical and even
emotional injuries, or in the most costly of all
cases, death of gallant citizens — Nigerians
resolved to leaving dictatorship in the posh
of General Sanni Abacha. Thus, a gravebreak
of tyranny will be combated with stern
intolerance. It is however most tyrannical to
decree a cancellation of a students' dinner
without considering neither their emotional
contribution nor financial input. Therefore,
Dr. Austin Moye and his most noble comrade
should be rehabilitated — reeducated — on
the tenets of democratic rule and on that very
basis for which they earn their living. They
should write us books; present us scholarly
papers, on the prospect of the language of
French and its relevance to the sociopolitical
cum economic landscape of the nation — that
is their profession! Lecturers are
researchers. They are neither nitpickers nor
natters over students' dinners. But first,
before their Rehabilitation, let them answer
to their crimes against a group of innocent
students.
.
That aside. To the UNIBEN security
department. Let me ask if those men also
sign affidavits of good conduct? If they do,
then they should be docked before a tribunal
of conscience, sanctioned for a breach of
good conduct for their infliction of
illegitimate anguish and for their thorough
despisedness of law abiding students.
Otherwise, the university community is left
off guard to galloping into a dangerous
dispensation — a dispensation where
Anarchy is Order — there, petition becomes
inconsequential, since hope is lost in the
university Justice System — when similar
brutality projects itself, students will result
to self-defense, assaults will be paid with
counter-assault, violence with counter-
violence, and civility with civility.
.
When crime occurs and no legal, logical and
moral response is offered, Comrade Wole
Soyinka warns — impunity evolves and
becomes integrated in conduct! For every
crime, there must be a sanction, and for
every victim, there must be an
indemnification.
.
In the meantime however, as we await — in
disquietude — the fall of the curtain of this
honourable-lecturers-staged-against-
students embarrassing drama, let me advice
that, it is very behind time to play me the
soccer of browbeat. It will only drag the
university into an abyss of nitwit. Forget the
externalization — chase no shadow! My facts
are accurate. Sanction the violators.
Restitute the violated. Repatriate their
properties. Free the 36! Free humanity!
.
PATRICK Majekodunmi Benjamin (SANKARA)

"Sanction the violators.
Restitute the violated. Repatriate their
properties. Free the 36! Free humanity!"

I expected final year student to be smarter than signing a petition against even the least lecturer in the department at that level.

LARRYDKING:
I expected final year student to be smarter than signing a petition against even the least lecturer in the department at that level.

What are you implying?