Date Published: 01/26/10

The good news from Igbere By Emmanuel Onwubiko 

Three issues cropped up in my mind as I settled down to do this piece. They include the exclusive report by Vanguard on Sunday of January 24 th 2010 that Nigeria’s Foreign Embassies’ staff and management are starving because of accumulated unpaid salaries and other emoluments by Nigerian government since three months now. The second is the misleading report of the recent Jos Crisis by Human Rights Watch (HRW) which to a lot of Nigerians was explosive and unnecessarily inflammatory in our ever divisive society. Thirdly, the declining fortune of democracy in Imo state and the systematic clampdown on voices of opposition, most especially in my state of birth – Imo, attracted my focus. I indeed decided to dwell on the good news from Igbere, Abia state with specific reference to the advanced plan by the immediate past chief servant of Abia state Orji Uzor Kalu to open the University of Arts, Science and Technology in Igbere, Abia state. 

Sharing this good news from Igbere with my wide reading public is my way of healing our minds of the sadness and shock that enveloped our consciousness with the recent unconscionable and dastardly acts of mass killing by religious zealots, foreign fighters and those unscrupulous soldiers that allegedly went on killing spree and massacre of innocent people in Bukuru and other parts of Plateau state. This is also a form of healing balm to the hundreds of persons who lost dear siblings and hard earned property in the violence that consumed most parts of Plateau State following sectarian differences.   

On the bad news that Nigerian Foreign Service workers in the various embassies all over the world are being owed their three months salaries and allowances even when revelation from the National Assembly emerged that the foreign Ministry spent a whooping N2.7 Billion on meaningless foreign trips, one can only but express shock and consternation at the unprecedented heartlessness shown by the officials of the Foreign ministry who are guilty of criminal dereliction of duty which has exposed our people serving Nigeria in foreign countries to unwarranted hardship. Report in the Sunday Leadership of January 24 th 2010 carried a story that Nigeria’s foreign Minister Mr. Ojo Maduekwe was disgraced during his recent trip to New York when he failed to get an appointment to see the United States permanent Representative to the United Nations Miss. Suzan Rice who turned down his request for a meeting on the ground that she will not waste her precious time speaking to a foreign minister of a country whose President (Head of state) disappeared into another distant land since two months. Ojo Maduekwe had in a recent interview with the British Broadcasting Cooperation (BBC) candidly revealed that he had not spoken nor seen the disappeared Nigerian leader since Umaru Musa Yar’adua allegedly checked into a Saudi Arabian Hospital following health challenge. 

The Nigerian minister reportedly spent a princely sum of $6,000 United States Dollars on hotel fees for just two nights even when his staff in the different Nigerian Embassies around the world are undergoing excruciating economic adversities because of accumulated unpaid salaries. This is obscene and most reprehensible. 

On the second issue bordering on the tendency of the Human Rights Watch to always dish out explosive and unsubstantiated story on the Plateau state religious crisis, I will only say that we are shocked that a body that has refused to set up its office in Nigeria will now claim to know Nigeria more than all of us. But I ask; what does Human Rights Watch stand to gain by inflaming emotions and passions of the divided people of Jos, Plateau state? 

On the declining fortune of democracy in Imo state as well as other states across the federation, I think the organized civil society are to be blamed for allowing some persons who never won elections in the first place to not only call the shots but to dictate to the rest of us how our lives must be ordered. How come that constructive opposition in Imo state has gone to bed apparently because the powers-that-be may have bribed them to shut up and ‘siddon-look’ while the resources of Imo are allegedly mismanaged? Have the ordinary people of Imo not suffered enough as to collectively stage non-violent civil disobedience and other mass actions to protest the demise of democracy, transparency and accountability in that state? The ball is in the court of Imo people to liberate themselves from the existential Chains tied around their necks by the Ikedi Ohakim-led civilian dictatorship.  
 

Now, the good news from Igbere is that the university of Arts, Science and Technology, Igbere, Abia state is now waiting for the officials of the National Universities Commission (NUC) to enable the institution obtain its provisional license and commence operations. 

The Registrar of the proposed university, Dr. Victor Ike Oye, made the above disclosure while conducting the Abia state Deputy Governor Chris Akomas, and his team round the completed facilities, during an unscheduled visit to the site, saying that every faculty was ready for the smooth take off of the tertiary institution. He said that the final visit of the National Universities Commission. (NUC) for provisional license would enable the private university initiated by the former Governor of Abia state, Chief Orji Uzor  Kalu, commence advertisements of vacancies for employment followed by admission of students. 

On behalf of the Human Rights Community, we congratulate the former Chief servant of Abia state for his uncommon determination to bring development and educational advancement to the grassroots especially in the South East that has suffered neglect from the Federal government. We hope that the provisional license would be issued in time by the National Universities Commission (NUC) so that the dream of the initiator of this good project will not be in vain. 

There is no doubt that the private university in Igbere will be one of the best going by the high quality of facilities that this writer saw on ground at Igbere. Those who know Orji Uzor Kalu say he is a man of good quality who will ensure that only the best is good for that proposed university. As a man who is pro-poor in his style of writing his newspaper columns both in Sun and Leadership Newspapers, the hundreds of thousands of young persons from very poor backgrounds are of the hope that when it commences admission of students, that the university of Arts, Science and Technology, Igbere Abia state would be pro-poor. 
 

* Onwubiko heads Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria.