I was alone, all alone, in my world of loneliness and aloneness of beauty when my phone buzzed the buzz akin to that of a bee in flight. It was a wondrous sound very really as that of a busy bee in flight in quest for nectar in the nectaries of flowers. The buzz was not the kind that usually enters my phone. But in this particular afternoon of clear sky of comforting joy, my immured aloneness heard the buzz. It was in the form of a WhatsApp message – forwarded to me. It was a post of patriotic and qualitative reality about our condition, the condition of our universities, our public universities, currently on strike that the dullards in political power and authority compelled them to embark on.

Now the said post contained a report or, better put, was a report by Joshua Johnson published in MySchoolNews. I don’t know Joshua Johnson. I also don’t know by any journalistic or creative guess the medium that floated the circulated report. But I know, no, we know the owner, to whom the scintillating words in the report were attributed. Chief E.K. Clark, who needs no ounce of introduction from this columnist because of his famous fame, was the owner of the words that centred on the current knotty problem between ASUU and the central government – which I have called in several quarters a government that is not a government creating knotty problems where there are none.

In the report which actually was a paraphrase of an interview the fearless and fiery old titan of restless patriotic spirit granted the “News Agency of Nigeria” (“NAN”) in Abuja on 23 May, 2022, or so, there was no murmur from the interviewee. E.K. Clarke minced no words, and his easy, natural and blunt manner of communicating his truthful thoughts on national matters and subjects enabled him to expound scintillatingly on the ASUU strike. The South-South and Niger Delta denizen of restless courage who only a few days ago turned ninety-five years “celebrated” his birthday with that gift of an interview, in my view, to ASUU.

He rightly radically told the central government to take the negotiation between it and ASUU to the Ministry of Education because that ministry would appreciate far better the effect of the strike than the Ministry of Labour. Of course, everybody knows that the little-minded local champion of sorts who proclaims himself the alpha and omega of negotiation matters is very, very anti-ASUU even though he pretends to be fair and impartial as everybody but he knows.

He is a conciliator who is not a conciliator who before the ASUU strike began compelled the meager and worthless salaries of the dons to be stopped. Meanwhile, he ordered that the striking non-academic staff be paid their salaries and entitlements of serfs and slaves in full. The small man in all respects is encouraging the non-academics to clash with the dons to cement his nice divide-and-kill scheme. Simply put, the conciliator is an instigator. But all the non-academic staff unions are not peopled and populated by dimwits as the instigator foolishly thought they were. He will fall as one of his collaborators of the IPPIS fame has fallen never to rise again.

Chief E.K. Clark who was Commissioner of Education in the defunct Mid-West Region (and later Mid-West State) in his much younger years is very conversant with education matters and affairs, including those of university institutions. He was highly connected with the University of Benin as a past pro-chancellor and chairman of the University’s Council; his household, nuclear and extra-nuclear, was (and still is) theoretically and practically intimately a university household, and he presently is a proud and inspiring owner of a steadily growing and flourishing university. So our admirable personage of expansive capabilities knows his onions. What he spoke recently concerning the ASUU strike was not out of character – as a nationalist and patriot and elder statesman of stout proportions.

Now let me quote him verbatim: “ASUU is not fighting for their interest alone. I learnt it is only now they are including the review of their own salary otherwise the 2009 agreement they are talking about is for infrastructure development. In every country, education is number one on the list. Once the people are educated, other sectors of the economy will have fewer challenges. The Accountant-General who was supposed to have generated this payment is alleged to have embezzled N80 billion. That is about half of what ASUU is demanding to largely develop our education system. ASUU is demanding about N200 billion, that is not too much to fix a critical sector like education.”

These are splendidly scintillating and scintillatingly splendid words of an enlightened personage who knows the essence of education and its role and value. Unfortunately, our instigators and haulers of our billions, incompetents of the severely worst grade, who are incompetently in positions and posts that they should not be in have painted this country your country my country our country red with scandalous scandals and disgraceful conducts that are far worse than scandalous scandals and disgraceful conducts. Chief E.K. Clark, the proprietor of Edwin Clark University, Kiagbodo in Delta State, sets forth with scintillating clarity and persuasiveness the kinds of experiential tertiary educational reality which are correctly for him and us the true beginning of all infrastructural development, healthy, wealthy living and moral sensibility.

Indeed, E.K. Clarke offers us a very healthy criticism of the dull runners of our university education in the respective ministries of bullion van job-men. His point of view is serviceable, businesslike, eloquently practical and rhetorically un-effusive – which is not beyond the limits of effective rhetoric. His quoted words should and must appeal to our dons. The passage should enter ASUU’s Quotabulary, which I have enjoined the ASUU national leadership to originate in the soonest possible time after the dullards and foxes and tarantulas and hyaenas are put away. I am not building castles in Spain! Or am I?

Chief E.K. Clark’s justness of judgment on the matter of ASUU strike scintillatingly couched in his words aforesaid should appeal to the central government’s Minister of Education, a non-politician, who should jettison the irrational passions of politicians he has been mingling with. I am building castles in Spain! The man is now too far gone in the foxy ways of his fellow cabinet members who are professional politicians of dishonour. Thunder!

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.