Ngige’s casualties

Something big and little and little and big at the same time has happened in the last couple of days in respect of ASUU, our one and only union that abominates any injustice or wrong act or wrong doing in the land, this land – your land my land, and our land where our universities are no more our universities and never will be our universities unless our so-called political leaders end their infatuation with evil. And one evil that prevails in the land is the evil of falsehood. The central regime’s dramatis personae have been fortifying it with evil, real evil of falsehood – which they have been employing to decimate the just struggle of ASUU. What an irony! What an irony employing the hyperbole of deceit drivelling blood for effect!

What transpired last week at the National Industrial Court of Nigeria certainly spoke volumes upon volumes about this land that has witnessed heinous crimes against university education; but why and why? On Wednesday, 21 September the Industrial Court ruled against ASUU. I knew it would happen as it happened. In fact, in this column on Friday, 16 September 2022 I said, inter-alia, as follows: “I have a lurking suspicion that the government and its constrictors are out and are determined to straighten out the judicial paper in the mind of the judge in their favour.” Furthermore, in the last paragraph of the column, I said that “The union shall know no retreat, no surrender and no depression in its decently patriotic and patriotically decent struggle even in all the pertinent courts of justice as well against its constrictors. I can hear the knock of judicial thunder with my inner ears” (“Reflections on ASUU and the constrictors”). Everything revealed to me shall come to pass.

Meanwhile, stay in suspense as I try to address what I must address here and now. Before this is done, however, let me quote one of my ardent readers pertinently. By the way, as every reader of this column knows, I quote my ardent readers from time to time because I see myself as their faithful and strict apostle and vice versa. Now my reader’s words: “The government can only deceive itself for as long as it wants. The draconian policy of ‘no work no pay’ cannot work, will never work. If I were to advise ASUU, I will say no more negotiations until the government announces a reversal of that nonsensical policy. Why should ASUU even sit down with these locusts? The agreement is there; let the brainless government go and implement: End of story!”

This reader was reacting to my last Friday’s essay entitled ‘“No work, no pay:” Oppressors’ law.’ Suyi Ayodele, every ‘Tuesday Flat Out’ columnist of the Nigerian Tribune, sent me the words I have just quoted. I perfectly understand his patriotic dimensions which are not entirely different from mine and those of many other compatriots. One of his primary dimensions is that ASUU should be as committed as ever to its struggle to reclaim our public universities from this central government of liars whose falsehood has caused and is still causing so much pain that is drooping us droopingly.

Personally, I hold Chris Ngige mainly responsible for what is what in the current almost eight month’s strike of ASUU. Clearly, Ngige, inter-alios, must be held responsible for the abominations which have caused and are still causing our academic casualties. His rhetoric is the rhetoric and has been the rhetoric of falsehood. His role all along has been the role of the owner and opener of the ways of tainted falsehood. The rhetoric generated therefrom, I say it again, is the rhetoric of the lying and drivelling one as his education minister colleague publicly informed us not long ago. Let me weigh you down no longer with suspense. Ngige illegally dragged ASUU to the National Industrial Court even when negotiation that was no negotiation was on between the warring parties. What did Ngige, the labour minister, say in this wise? As a minister who is akin to a government official who lives the life of spite, un-selflessness, wickedness, judgment that is no judgment, and un-forgiveness, he said openly that the government did not take ASUU to court! Who did? His lie was ironically exposed in court when the lawyers the federal government contacted and contracted to argue the government’s case owned up to be representing the Federal Government.

Of course, the interlocutory injunction that Barrister Igwe, SAN and company got for Ngige and company has since been called “black market” injunction – as I foresaw (although not exactly as used in the immediately quoted words) in my first quotation of myself already tendered above. But I am now inclined to call the court order Ngige-market injunction. Some solid judicial comments on the last court proceedings that I have read certainly justify my current record of it. As a matter of fact, a brilliant review-cum-analysis of the National Industrial Court’s “injunctive relief against ASUU” by Abiola Sanni (SAN and a Professor of Commercial Law, University of Lagos) justifies my journalistic intervention as I hereby present it.

The first casualty of Ngige’s hard deviousness is His Lordship Justice Polycarp Hamman. Allegedly, he has allowed himself to be used to procure Ngige-market injunction for the un-deserving – the un-deserving who is not in alignment with the power and vibrational vitality of justice without casualties. Whatever compelled His Lordship to do what he did will cause him cosmic consequences that are inescapable and which can never ever give him peace of mind that is peace of mind. The other casualties are the government’s lawyers whose judicial voices were bereft of the holiness of truth and justice and sanely sane morality. Indeed, the one called Senator Etang exposed himself as one whose judicial heart is as light as a feather-less feather when Seun Okunbaloye of Channels Television politely but frankly dissected him in his every day 7:00PM “Politics Today.” For tactical and strategic reasons, I must spare my readers essential details of his interview of Barrister Etang the driveller. But let me say this: Our public university students are major casualties of his and his principal’s actions. What they have done to the students, I must say, is not un-akin to the poison of King Cobra and a scorpion or tarantula bite. If and whenever their acts go the whole hog, what I am saying will be better appreciated.

So far the greatest casualties of Ngige’s rhetoric of deceit and falsehood and power of vindictiveness are ASUU members, many of whom allegedly have died. The man’s disease of falsehood and hunger poison are committing havoc which ASUU is, however, commanding. Don’t ask me how? Thoth, a deathless Divine Master and Avatar of Justice and of Healing and of Expansive Knowledge and more will not leave – and is not leaving – ASUU alone. Sooner or later Ngige and company will become their own casualties. At the appointed time they will pay dearly for every of their heinous crimes against tertiary education in the land. Only the deep can soar in the realm of the deep. O dear, dear ASUU, never forego dwelling in the struggle. The struggle is tasking and drooping you droopily but do it and carry it on with drool.

Let me anchor with the persuasive emblematic words of Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924), Czech but German-speaking novelist and short-story writer:
“One Idiot is One Idiot.
Two Idiots Are Two Idiots.
Ten Thousand Idiots
Are a Political Party.”

Interpret the quotation how you will, but its vibrational profoundness reminds me of the ancient Egyptian Thoth’s magical and vibrational profoundity whose depth I shall share with my readers in no distant time. The poison our idiots have put in the body of our public universities will soon be withdrawn with one profound word of command. Meantime, we must hum and keep on humming: Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Thunder!!!
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.