JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, and Chairman of the Nigeria Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), retired General Mohamed Buba Marwa, were two of the hundreds of Nigerians honoured last week by the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, retired Major-General Muhammadu Buhari. Marwa was awarded the Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON). The complaint of many was that Marwa deserved more than that and that the second highest award of Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) would have been more like it. His exploits as the executive Chairman of the NDLEA are the reasons why many think Marwa deserves all the accolades and highest awards on offer. Maybe the CON is a good starting point and Marwa will get upgraded in years to come. There are an uncountable number of Nigerians with multiple national honours: OON, OFR, CON, GCON, etc. Oloyede, now honoured with the CON, is one of them. Some awardees are upgraded with each award while some even get demoted. Award-loving Nigerians don’t complain whether you shunt them forward or backward! Award na award!
Awards, national honours and even promotions are subject to the vagaries of political vicissitudes, especially in political environments like Nigeria’s where corruption and corruptive influences are rife. So, the eminently qualified get glossed over or get pittance while the less qualified are decorated and lionised. The story was told at the then University of Ife (now ObafemiAwolowo University) of how cerebral Marxist scholar and radical lecturer, Dr. SegunOsoba, was passed over many times for the professorship that he bluntly refused to present himself for the award thereafter when he was pleaded with to do so. If many were not familiar with that story we at least saw how Gani Fawehinmi was snubbed and denied the SAN, forcing the students of Great Ife to award him their own Senior Advocate of the Masses (SAM) before he eventually got the SAN. In the two cases cited here, it became an embarrassment for the powers-that-be as it became difficult to justify why minnows were getting awards and honours that colossuses were being denied.
So, it is not a surprise that the long list of awardees rolled out last week by Buhari was a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly. I looked out for some names, they were not there. I saw many names there and I squirmed. There were, however, a smattering of names on the long, boring list that deserve their award – or something even higher. For years we have watched the performance of Prof. Ishaq Oloyede as the Registrar of JAMB. He has taken the battle to the barons of examination malpractices within and outside our institutions of higher learning. Without mincing words, Oloyede, like Marwa, deserves even a higher award but it would appear as if the highest awards are reserved for the highest political office holders and their business partners and collaborators.
Since his appointment as the NDLEA boss, Marwa, the erstwhile old Borno and Lagos military administrator has taken the battle to drug baron, winning many high-brow battles in the process. Marwa’s fame has spread far and wide and I will not be surprised if he soon becomes the toast of not only considerate Nigerians but also of the international community. Other heroes of the long-suffering Nigerian masses are those well-placed Nigerians who have leveraged on the occasion of the dispensing of national honours to vent their grievances and draw attention to the abject neglect of the masses by their rulers. Last week, two such Nigerians rose to the occasion: Chimamanda Adichie reportedly quietly rejected the award without making any fuss about it. He simply did not turn up. But I prefer singer Teni Apata’s style; she turned up, collected the award but ignored Buhari’s handshake. She simply left the president’s hand dangling there. Buhari must have been dazed. Before Teni was my comrade of blessed memory, Bamidele Francis Aturu, a Youth Corper who, in 1988 at his passing out parade, lambasted the military dictatorship and refused to shake the hand of the Niger State military administrator, Lawan Gwadabe, who was about to hand him his Best Corper of the Year award.
Since then, we have had the likes of Gani Fawehinmi; Prof. Chinua Achebe, Prof. Tam David-West; and Alhaji GidadoIdris reject national awards in protest against one misrule or malaise or the other. Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, reportedly tossed his CFR medal over the Third Mainland Bridge into the lagoon also in protest against military dictatorship and government misrule while also rejecting his nomination for the Centenary Award by former President Goodluck Jonathan. So, national honours and awards have always been a potpourri of sorts. It is a gathering of hens, hawks and pigeons under the same roof. Separating the grains from the chaff is, therefore, a task that must be done as we congratulate the few deserving of their award.
ALSO READ FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
and then