Days of hatred

Our country is a marvellous country or better, our country is becoming a marvellous country. Things happen so fast and so unexpectedly day by day that you cannot but wonder and marvel and marvel at what you see now and what you did not see or know in your past days and years. Compare then and now and you cannot but abhor your political people of today you don’t want to harbour in your good hearts and minds. Things are bad, very bad in our country today. And you cannot but carry in your hearts and minds thoughts of hatred, even if you didn’t mean to do so, for those who you perceive to be responsible for these days of hatred. You also seem to abhor all persons, wherever they are even in the professions, who mouth support for them and their cunningly abject attitudes and policies.

In the night of Monday, March 15, 2020, precisely at 9:00 p.m. running to 10:00 p.m. Professor Banji Akintoye, a prominent historian and a frontline Yoruba leader, was interviewed on Channels Television. The interview dwelt on numerous issues and topics bordering on our current problems and pains as Nigerians. The eighty or so years retired professor and Yoruba leader was absolutely a sad and angry man who obviously tried in vain to control his sadness and anger throughout the duration of the well thought-out interview. I shared his sadness and anger especially at the point where he dwelt on the state of our education and universities today.

We no longer have the kind of education and university that were in vogue in his days when in the whole of the British-controlled world our country numbered among the top ones. Our education and universities today have virtually collapsed. Clearly, I thought, we have betrayed our youth so many, many times. And our Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), by far the greatest union in our land, has been maligned so many, many times even by those who should support the union’s cause, for its vigorous challenge and protest against those who are hell-bent on destroying our education and universities and our betrayed youths.

As I am giving thought to the subject, ASUU members are on a two-week warning strike meant to draw attention, as the members have always done, to the poor funding and parlous state of our universities. Some television workers who are reviewers of newspapers which they don’t review diligently and decently lack the mere decency to see what the union sees. They even lack the knowledge with which to put the union in its place. And their journalistic memories and sights have lost their teeth and claws maybe on account of the gifts of compromise they keep on enjoying from the betrayers of our youths. Rather than being on the side of ASUU they are turning their rage on ASUU. All the days I heard their raucous voices against ASUU hatred for them grew in me, the kind of hatred all of us must allow to grow in us in the endeavour to smash those in power and authority who are the causes of our educational problem.

On Monday, March 16, 2020, that is, this past Monday, this newspaper wrote an incisive editorial on what recently happened at the University of Lagos concerning the “painful postponement of Unilag convocation.” If you missed the editorial, go get the newspaper and learn a little more about the masters and killers of our education and universities who want many of us to re-discover our violent youth. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) University of Lagos’ Branch was on point when it “passed a vote of no confidence in Dr. Babalakin and declared him ‘persona non grata’ to the university.”

By the way, Dr. Wale Babalakin is the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman, Governing Council of the University of Lagos. He is emerging in the consciousness of almost every university academic as an insatiable stooge of our central government’s demagogues who dare and are daring to let loose the terrible forces that are warring and whirling in every circle of the central government to bring death to our universities. From our arteries they must be resisted for the good and in the interest of our country. We must be passionate about this. My pen rages as it is writing this. But it does not want to be accused of playing the role of a demagogue whose demagogy would end up eating our country.

However, we must allow our hatred for the destroyers of our country to germinate well in us in order to let them know that we totally refuse to let them destroy our generation and age. Our hatred for them must enable us to recall and restore our country’s marvellous age when our country’s education was up there in the educational register of the commonwealth of the world’s most progressive nations and countries. This certainly is no exaggeration as we gleaned from the great historian last Monday night. It is time to put a spell on the helmsperson of our country. It is time to put a spell of construction, re-construction and restoration on him. Can we do it? Yes, we can.

Our days of hatred must re-define our country for our betrayed youths and for us all. The time is ripe for the re-definition, re-construction and restoration of our country. We must do so now. Worse days of hatred are galloping. Days of real hatred are hurrying near. Real days of hatred are advancing and advancing with alacrity. The Living Spiritual Masters are guiding them a-right. You better believe me, very sincerely and most sincerely.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.