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By Assoc. Prof. Otu, Otu Akanu Ph.D
I came across the worst interview Channels Television has ever conducted, and it was with Sen. Ita Enang as guest recently. In the interview, the Senator, whose stock in trade is to hop like a grasshopper from one political party to another, opened his gutters to say that “FG Have Tolerated ASUU for Too Long.”
For Channels Television, which is an award-winning station, this variety is, to say the least, worrisome as none of his submissions can add any iota of value to the quest for solutions to Nigeria’s education problems.
Sen. Ita Enang has become an albatross to Africa and indeed Nigeria’s sociopolitical development. Such an ingenuous politician cannot secure a space in developed democracies but is the Lord of the Manor in a clueless administration that has held Nigerians to the jugulars in the past seven and half years.
One of my friends who is a lawyer told me that lawyers are Learned Gentle Men. I didn’t doubt him, I believed him hook, line and sinker. But after listening to Ita Enang speak on Channels TV, I began to doubt what my friend told me days back. However, what he told me could still be true considering that there is bound to be a Judas in every twelve. Unequivocally and without fear of contradictions, Ita Enang is an exception to the popular belief that lawyers are Learned Men.
If my assertion is wrong, how come a lawyer in the person of Ita Enang was unable to correctly answer any of the questions posed to him by Mr. Seun Akinbaloye of Channels TV?
Few of the questions are:
“Do you think that the National Industrial Court based on the law that set it up has the jurisdiction to answer or to hear this matter being that it has not been first entertained by Industrial Arbitration Panel?”
“Would you say that Nigerian government does not have the money to meet ASUU’s demand?”
Though Ita Enang was talking sporadically like market women none of his submissions could provide any single correct answer to the interview questions. His incapacitation at answering such simple questions not only ridiculed him but also got the interviewer disenchanted with his submissions. The interview session that was supposed to last for 30 minutes was cut short by Mr. Seun Akinbaloye to stop him from further public deception.
To adumbrate the phrase “A bridge burner” to Ita Enang is to be guilty of understatement. Barrister Ita Enang enrolled into the University of Calabar as a law student 5 years after the institution ceased to be a campus of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, by 1980 to be precise. The total number of enrollment/students strength of the institution in 1975 was 896. It is most unfortunate that after his law school at Lagos in 1985, he never stepped into any university for higher studies, neither has he ever carried out oversight functions of any university in Nigeria throughout the 12 years he was in the National Assembly. To him, the total number of students in each Nigerian universities today is still 896 that were registered in his warped mind in the 80s. If he had visited the universities recently, he would have had the prospect of understanding the disturbing state of Nigerian universities and their mountainous challenges. In the absence of this, he chooses to obliviously advise President Buhari to ignore Nigerian Universities and walk away.
It is most unpatriotic that a man who enjoyed the serene academic environment of the 80s, probably with scholarship, free meal, free accommodation, etc, will today turn around to burn the same scholarship bridge he passed through and make it a herculean task for others behind him to pass through also. What a selfish politician?
Why did I decide to label him a FAIR WEATHER politician?
Sen. Ita Enang lacks the ingenuity to eke out comfort political space of his own. He can trade with his beloved ones for a political position. He traded with the democratic dividends of his constituency for senatorial position, the same manner he now wants to trade with the academic future of teeming Nigerian public university students for political appointment come 2023. Being a selfish, unprincipled and greedy politician, during his first tenure in the Senate, between 2011 – 2015, when Akwa Ibom people cried foul to Governor Akpabio’s administration, Ita Enang fanned the cinder of that administration without any sense of affability and iota of indignity simply because the undemocratic political trajectory of that time was a FAIR WEATHER for him. He eulogized that administration and called the bluff of the public outcry against that administration.
During his days in the Senate, he traded with the Federal Polytechnic originally approved to be sited in his town, Ididep, Ibiono LGA of Uyo Senatorial District in the same manner Essau traded his right for a plate of porridge. Gov. Akpabio promised him a second tenure sojourn to the Senate and coveted the Federal Polytechnic to his own village, Ukana, Ikot Ntuen in Essien Udim LGA of Ikot Ekpene. Trust politicians, when in 2015, Gov. Akpabio swindled and denied him another chance to the Senate in a Maradonian style, he suddenly realized that Akpabio was the only governor in Nigeria then, who was far behind in performance thresholds. He began to ask for the whereabout of Akwa Ibom state allocations and poured all manner of vituperations on Akpabio. At that point, the Polytechnic was already gone.
In view of the foregoing therefore, given that he recently lost his bid to become the next governor of Akwa Ibom state in a disgraceful primary election, Sen. Ita Enang is seriously in search of employment. To him, the shortest possible path is to blackmail and trade with the future of Nigerian students and ASUU to get appointment after the general election in 2023, but Nigerians are smarter this time, as nobody will allow him to achieve that selfish political motive.
All these notwithstanding, ASUU is neither phased nor distracted. Bearing in mind the fact that education is sine qua non to civilization and development, ASUU believes that the future of Nigerian students is sacrosanct and must be protected beyond the rantings of Ita Enang and his co-travellers in media houses and pages of newspapers.
Assoc. Prof. Otu, Otu Akanu Ph.D
Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ebonyi State