In response to Goodluck Jonathan’s untold hypocrisy, it is necessary to always point out their flaws in this manner even if we cannot always be chanced to engage them in persons. Politicians whether serving or had served, should not continually be spared of the mockeries they make of the people lest they continue to rape our senses and make us feel guilty for the hopeless situations they created. In his proud assertion, Jonathan maintained how Nigerian universities have become breeding grounds for cultism. This statement reaffirms to us one more time the important reason why we the people must also learn to tell our stories by ourselves, if we don’t, these politicians will become the heroes of history, whereas they are a devil who paint themselves as the Jesus at the same time.
As reported by Punch on 24th of November, Dr Goodluck Jonathan made the above assertion on 23rd of November at the GOUN Convocation ceremony in Enugu where he spoke as a guest lecturer at the program. Goodluck Jonathan’s statement is correct, in fact no doubts, campuses now breed hooliganism, or cultism –to say it all.
However, like many other politicians, posterity should not spare him, especially when they begin to make ridiculous statements and rub it on the faces of innocent masses as they like. We must always set the records straight because history is very sacred. In 2014, Goodluck Jonathan as the then President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was booed out of Obafemi Awolowo University Campus by a mass of students. Jonathan who had previously been told by the students not to bother in showing up at the university for the public lecture which he was invited for –this stand was taken against Jonathan for being one of the major stakeholders who had largely underfunded education – but he adamantly came anyway, and his coming was at a period when the students of this federal university were battling bitterly with a recent 300% increment in fees. Internet is there to remind us, as the rest is best left as history of what happened to Jonathan on the campus on that fateful day.
We are in a country where “leaders”, after failing, blame the masses for the failure, they make the masses feel guilty and in turn, even the people sometimes ignorantly blame and fight themselves too, despite being pushed into the suffering and helpless scenarios by the looting governments.
They have enslaved the people, not only economically and politically, but morally and mentally too, in fact spiritually as well, because every Ramdan and Christmas period is an avenue for the government to tell the people to pray for Nigeria and look up to God for help in their helpless situations. Buhari called Nigerian youths lazy, he blamed the youths for being unproductive but neglected the unproductive environments they have created for the youths. In Nigeria, people are arrested for being jobless and poor as if it these people were enjoying the poverty. Around Berger in Lagos, the government displayed notice all around, prohibiting hawking, begging and crossing. The situation only needed the worse measures that the people would then be prohibited from walking and speaking. We have more laws that prohibit our freedom than those that make us feel like humans. The above scenarios are the governments’ methods of hate speech and hate actions against the people.
Jonathan at the GOUN convocation lecture went as far as even blaming the academia for the trends of hooliganism on campuses. This is a country where lecturers themselves are frustrated by the meagre salaries, unpaid allowances and harsh conditions of teaching, while senators who are barely as sound as the doctors and professors, live fat on monthly millions of naira. It must just be these lecturers that should kill themselves in policing the morals of students whose access to qualitative education had already been jeopardized by the Jonathan kinds of people in government.
Hooliganism on campuses have their roots in under funding because students are venturing into other adventures to fill the loopholes.
This development again reminds me of an earlier published article I managed to write which addressed the dearth of qualitative ideas in the universities, and how authorities and governments now chase after shadows of lost morals, the lost morals are in themselves a reflection of the decadence in qualitative education. The governments are only fast at looking for the doors to push the blames of their own failure, forgetting that the people are already too homeless to accommodate government’s irresponsibility. No, we will not take it!
We have seen Christian associations asking parents to warn their children off ‘indecent dressing’ to prevent rapes, universities are after this dressing code too. Ironically, we have equally seen university staff, pastors and imams who sexually harass the most decently dressed victim. Does it then matter whether the female dress like our dear virgin Mary or like the twenty one virgins in heaven before they can prevent being sexually harassed?
The culprits behind the societal ills are in the top offices. Like the oil of anointing, the decadence flows from the heads to the bodies.
If our universities are breeding grounds for cultism today, our negligent politicians like the Goodluck Jonathans in governments are the grand patrons.
gbengaoloniniran@gmail.com. Twitter: @gbenga_von
