SATANIC VIBRATIONS IN OUR ALMA MATER: BARTH OKOLO’S MEGALOMANIA BY M A C ODU (ALOHA and Fifth National President UNAA) Nowhere is excluded from the intrusion of satanic powers. All systems must provide institutional checks for monitoring distortions in otherwise self regulatory communities like universities. A university system, beginning with University of Bologna, known worldwide as the first university, has supreme purposes as the pursuit of truth, the publishing of truth and the betterment of humanity. The university can be said to the be one of the most efficient democratic institutions in the world on account of age-old structures for assuring that only such ideas as redound to positive elevation of the status of man in creation find anchorage within its precincts. The University of Nigeria, Nigeria’s premier independent university has had a reversal in the recent past from glory to shame on account of the entry into its management of the worst kind of megalomaniacs. Some may say that ills of our larger Nigerian community of warped human beings have afflicted the university system. It ought not to be so. For universities are supposed to have built-in processes for dealing with despots who find themselves within its walls. When maniacs who have less than noble objectives find themselves in authority, there is no room for guessing at the magnitude of distortions which they are capable of generating. A human spirit that has lost its mission becomes a willing tool for darkness no matter where it finds itself. Such a human spirit is bound to distort any institution over which that human spirit gains charge. Satan and its minions are invited when wrong and self-centred objectives assume pre-eminence over social responsibility which appointment to a chief executive officer’s position should normally compel. I am inclined to presume from the onset that appointments that lead to this condition were inappropriate at first instance. Nothing should mask the quality of a man in sanguine institutions with appropriate mechanisms for determining the quality of a human spirit invited to take charge of such a sensitive institution as a university. Under a dirty cloak of community development in unchartable paradigm, Barth Okolo has torn the inviolable fabric that holds universities as stable institutions apart and rendered the institution prostrate and deteriorating beyond redemption. He has defiled the sanctity of our university as a citadel within which attempts are made to restore the dignity of man. At this time of writing, the university is a terrorist camp where one man, the Vice Chancellor Professor Barth Okolo is a terrorist and all other members of the erstwhile vibrant community of human beings are his captives and victims. The worst genre of despotism is at play here. Unions are extinguished on VC’s direct orders. That is hardly conjecturable. Student Union Government known for training young minds to lead have been killed. Vice Chancellor and his unwilling retinue of cohorts have an entire community in suspended animation and gasping for air that is an inheritance of humanity. Arbitrary levying of fines and rents for hitherto inherent rights of members of the community are common place. Power bills are inflated and enforced on the community. An “Impact Factor” without any root in tradition is now being used for promotions. Check off dues for unions are not being paid to consociate organisations and unions, thereby impugning the integrity of our Alma Mater among her peers. Human academics who dare to resist the deleterious trend are used as examples by the administration for heightening its terror coefficients. Protests are however not abated by his rising truculence and terrorism. Appointments are made outside laid down positions and even so with outlandish pay packets that can only be described as executive recklessness. All groups in the community and outside are now in harmonious revolt. Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU), Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), the university community, religious groups, and University of Nigeria Alumni Association (UNAA) are now up in arms against the horrendous travesty of the quintessence of university as a perpetual institution. He has abdicated his position for fear of skin pain. But he seems to hold the entire education ministry hostage. Nothing filters through since he shares resources he claims to have generated from his chronic travel-mania on powers that should keep him under check. Nothing filters to even the visitor of the university in proper idiom. The university is in speedy decay at this time of writing. Its essence is evaporating fast. Its dignity is suffering abysmal erosion. That compelled the recent concourse of past national presidents of the University of Nigeria Alumni Association at the residence of the First National President of University of Nigeria Alumni Association, Professor B I C Ijeomah in Asaba to brainstorm on how we may remedy the trend in our Alma Mater and halt this bull in a china shop called Professor Barth Okolo. A Pro-chancellor and chairman of Council of University of Nigeria, who happens to be the first Alumnus Pro-chancellor of the university was removed by a minister of education with flagrant abuse of due process. The law setting up the university was set aside by a minister who was evidently unaware of the magnitude of his powers in relation to a sacred institution under his charge. He precipitately purported to send our properly baked product with defined goals for his Alma Mater packing in a revolting display of crass ignorance and executive high-handedness strange to the university environment anywhere in the world. Professor Barth Okolo had boasted of his connections with the high and mighty and was holding our perpetual institution hostage with powers that ought to nourish her for posterity. This was a revolting paradox of a nourisher and a destroyer in amazing cohabitation in one human being. In any case, as the permanent owners of the university, from whom we all obtained our nourishment, we, past national presidents of University of Nigeria Alumni Association, as custodians of the will of all alumni and alumni of our Alma Mater in perpetuity and for our earth lives have elected irrevocably to speak out now in defense of our supreme and inviolable ownership and power to sustain and nurture our Alma Mater. As a nourisher he has embarked on projects that seem on the face of it wholesome in a community starved of appropriate and adequate infrastructure. But modalities for realizing the infrastructure objectives are revolting to sensibilities of sane mortals. He has defied known procedural rules in his despotic trajectory. He has become a Czar who circumvents checks and balances with multiple awards of contracts to the same contractor to obviate need for approvals that must come through council as the ultimate accounting body of a citadel of learning. The community had evolved a Joint Action Committee to resist the trend. The bull in a china shop is not bothered about the avalanche of resistance building up in a community in which he is a principal officer. He has been bitten by a travel bug that keeps him in perpetual travel outside his mandate. He does not have any humanity to bestir him into circumspection about his mission. There has developed within our Alma Mater tension that could implode into a national tragedy if nothing is done quickly to arrest the trend. Most interested groups within the university system were represented at the remedial concourse. The key resolution that was reached was for combat with Professor Barth Okolo and all his cohorts in high places who would rather have our Alma Mater assume ignoble status in history of academy. We intend to raise such a combat force that Nigeria as a tottering arbitrary nation will not forget in a hurry. Light will always be superior to darkness in any combat. Lions and Lionesses in the four winds are invited to make contact with 12th National President Barrister Andrew Oru on cell phone number 234-8033030093 and at the internet at andreworu@yahoo for briefing.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 20:00:07 +0000
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