Most times, our actions and inactions rebound on us, even several decades after. Either in our individual or collective capacity, we sometimes become prisoners of the decisions we make and the words of our mouths. This is the summary of award-winning poet and public conscience, Niyi Osundare’s muse in one of his poems he entitled The word is an egg, an obvious poetification of the Yoruba wise-saying which counsels the wise to mind the word that proceeds from his mouth as, immediately it is spewed out, it becomes a broken egg that cannot be assembled again.
Permit me to digress. I have read the altercations between an online medium, Sahara Reporters and Senator Dino Melaye, representing Kogi State, over the latter’s possession or non-possession of a degree certificate from the Ahmadu Bello University, (ABU) Zaria. While the Senator has deployed all arsenal in his artillery to disclaim the online agency’s claim that though he attended ABU, he never graduated, the issue, even though very simple to dispense with, has refused to die its natural death.
The issue has also shown the tardiness, indolence and poor growth of Nigerian institutions, be it educational or otherwise. While the online agency sought and got, within a twinkle of an eye, replies to enquiries on Melaye’s possession of degree certificates from schools abroad like the London School of Economics and Harvard, ABU has not deemed it fit to reply the enquiry, days after. Its wonky alibi is that no one had asked it for information to that effect. In those countries where those institutions are based, there are institutional setups that answer such queries, almost like an auto-pilot, even if you are the son of the institutions’ heads or a cousin of Donald Trump/Theresa May.
Terse information emanating from ABU suggest that even though Melaye might have finished from the school, ABU may have decided to “allow” him go in 1988/1999 when he had spent years on end in the school, as suggested by avalanche of comments by the Senator’s school and classmates. Did Melaye distinguish himself in character as demanded by the academia all over the world before students are let go into the world, in ABU?
Pardon my digression as I revert. The altercation between governors of two states in Nigeria – Governors Nyesom Wike of Rivers and Samuel Ortom of Benue – has attracted the attention of this writer. You must have heard how vociferous Ortom has been in the defence of his people whom Fulani herdsmen hack almost daily as a lion tears an impala to pieces. You must have heard too how, apparently in frustration, Ortom had ordered armed Fulani herdsmen out of his state and how the Commissioner of Police in the state, in garrulous diffidence, told the governor that he was talking bunkum. No one can order anyone out of the state, the commissioner rebuffed. First, look at that tiff between Ortom and the commissioner of police as the actual bane of security crises in the country as governors are merely paper tigers who can bark and cannot bite. The commissioner is responsible to his paymasters in Abuja whose interest it is to protect the herdsmen, in spite of their manic attacks on hapless and helpless Nigerians, while the governor and his 35 other colleagues get continually fooled that they are the Chef Security Officers of their states.
Now, Nyesom Wike, capitalizing on the exchange between Ortom and the herdsmen and the security situation in Benue, immediately called on the federal government to impose a state of emergency on Benue State, maintaining that Ortom had lost control of the security situation in Benue and lacked capacity to stand up for his people. This comment got people wondering what the motive of that acidic comment could have been as espirit-de-corps among Nigerian rulers at that level ensures that they refrained from public demonization of one another. Wike did not keep the dramatic irony lingering for so long. On Thursday, while addressing the University of Port Harcourt Governing Council which paid him a courtesy call, the governor exploded the balloon of his ire.
“Benue governor has lost control. This is why there is an immediate need to declare a state of emergency for the restoration of security and protection of the people… when Rivers State had security challenges, Governor Ortom of Benue State was among the APC governors who plotted the declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State… instead of joining hands to proffer solutions, they politicized it,” Governor Wike had said.
If indeed Ortom was part of those calling for a state of emergency in Rivers State based on political party affiliation or personal disavowal with Wike, same charge will be apposite on him.
All these show that we must watch the kind of person we put in position of leadership. A leader is someone who buries his personal limitations, personal desires and subsume all for leadership and patriotism to take charge. The bulk of our leaders don’t. Through leaders’ actions and inactions, thousands of people would suffer, billions of naira are lost. May God help our nation in the hands of leaders who are prisoners of their personal limitations.
and then