Nnamdi Azikiwe University
Awka, Anambra State.
Mon, 21st January, 2014
My Dear Hillary,
IT'S PROBABLY TOO LATE
Actually, I feel constrained to avoid using the title 'comrade' in
addressing you. This is because, methinks associating the name Hillary
Ugwu with the noble title of a 'comrade' evidently sounds
inappropriate. It would definitely seem to be a misplaced appliance.
So, I crave your pardon, my dear Hillary, for I shall continue to
address you throughout this letter without the usual sycophantic use
of the title 'Comrade', to avoid a lucid case of giving honour to who
such is not due. In the last more than one year of your being in
office as the President of the Students Union Government, Unizik,
particularly at the beginning of your administration, I have on
several occasions, one-on-one, or over the phone, advised you against
failing on the hopes and mandate placed on you by the tens of
thousands of students of unizik to represent them as their union
leader. On every of such occasions, however, it has always dawned on
me that those advice were being heaped on mere deaf ears. Eventually
you even stopped picking my calls. And so far, nearly every other
student of the school that has had the 'rare privilege' of possessing
your cell Phone number has complained of having their calls
incessantly ignored by you, no matter the emergency of the
circumstances of the calls. Yet, these are the same students, whose
welfare and downtrodden voices, you pledged, during your campaign, to
fight for and uphold (in fact, I can still remember you clearly on
that manifesto-presentation day, 10th Dec. 2012, shouting at the top
of your voice, as though you were close to tears, about how
passionately you were going to fight for, and protect, the interests
of the students, if elected). We fell for the trick, I more than any
other, and we elected you our Union leader two days after. Except that
since then, to put it mildly, every shred of what was left of unionism
has totally vanished from unizik. And in its place, we now have a
Students Union Government that has become a disgrace, not just to the
idea of a union, but to the concept of studentship. thus, even as you
prepare to leave the office for the next president, I have decided to
write you, for perhaps you may yet seize this one last opportunity to
do at least just one good act that could save you from the
nomenclature of being addressed as the "worst thing that ever happened
to the students of Unizik".
Most people often refer to me as a fearless writer. And when I hear
them say it, I just laugh because unknown to them, I have fears just
like anyone else. In fact, as I write you this letter, I'm scared to
the bones about what might become my fate for daring to openly
criticize the SUG president so openly. I'm scared of the possible
devices, agents, or authorities you might now employ to fight against
me as a 'payback' for this action of mine. So, you see, I'm not
fearless; am simply courageous. For courage is indeed that
strengthening substance which spurs you to action despite the presence
of fears. So please, I pray you to indulge my restless pen to point
out just a few of your massive record-setting failures as a union
leader.
One date that stands vivid in my mind is 9th of December, 2012. That
was just two days after I was prevented from becoming the SUG
president through a disqualification that was uncalled for. On that
very Sunday afternoon, as one of the remaining three candidates, you
came to meet with me at Thrillers, Aroma Awka, to ask for my support.
You pleaded solemnly with me to adopt you as my candidate for the SUG
presidency, speaking of your passion to bring a change and all that. I
looked at your situation and felt pity. You were almost alone, without
money, without the right people, and you equally lacked much
popularity among the students. So I chose you. But before I did, I
asked you for only one thing, "when you become the President, please
give a listening ear to the voices of the students, and always strive
to give effect to their yearnings". I told you that I had lost a lot,
especially due to my unjustified disqualification, but that all I had
left was my good name on campus, especially among the students, which
till date remains my most important asset. You promised not to
disappoint the students if they gave you the mandate. With that solemn
promise, I gave you my word; we set to work, and you became the Union
President, winning others with a large margin. Alas, just a day after,
you changed drastically and as time went on one could hardly recognize
you anymore. From then on, we only remembered that we have a Union
President, a terrible one at that, each time there's the usual bad
news orchestrated by you.
I remember when, last year, ahead of the 2013 Anambra guber, you went
to meet with a certain candidate in the gubernatorial election for him
to give you money (and the said politician had quite a lot to share at
that time) so that you will deliver the votes of the students to him.
Possibly because the Union Vice President refused to accompany you on
such a filthy journey, you took another girl of your choice, whom you
made to impersonate the true VP of SUG Unizik, as you presented her to
the politician as the real VP. When the news of the scandal broke out,
you had no apology to anyone. By that time your pride and arrogance
had grown beyond remedy. Next, you seized all sources of income to the
Union Government, denying the Fin SEC and Treasurer their
constitutional rights to handle the Union's income. As a result of the
insistence of the duo of the financial officers of the Union that
things must be done rightly, that they must be allowed to exercise
their constitutional rights over the Union's finances, they were
beaten to stupor and locked up in a cell by the security in defense of
your selfish and corrupt interest. You felt like the happiest man on
earth that your fellow comrades had been messed up and disgraced by
the security men of the school in front of the students who look up to
them (the comrades) with the hope of protecting them from security
harassments. Afterwards, in response to any security unjustified
battering of any student, the slogan has become, "if they beat SUG
executives anyhow, how much more us the ordinary students". Thus the
students have lost all hopes of finding solace in the SUG Officials
whenever they face mistreatment from any quarter of the school. Kudos,
Mr President, for you can count that as your achievement.
Dear Hillary, Considering that the School lacks adequate on-campus
accommodation for the students, as you know about ninety percent of
the students live in off-campus Hostels built by private individuals.
Today, the cheapest you can get a room in any of the Unizik off-campus
hostels is N100,000 ( one hundred thousand Naira) per year. Some other
rooms cost as much as N160,000 (one hundred and sixty thousand naira)
per room, yearly. What is obtainable right here now is an
unimpeachable case of extortion meted out against the students by
businessmen who now see the students as the fastest means to enrich
themselves. A lot of students are homeless today as a result of this.
And the students have a President? Mr. Hillary (sorry, like I told
you, I shall not ever address you with the title 'comrade'), you have
not as much as uttered a word to the discouragement of this ugly trend
talk more of mobilizing action against it. The students keep
lamenting, but it seems no one is listening, and none is coming to
their rescue. And of course, they don't really expect intervention
from the SUG anyways, because to them no SUG exists here; talk more of
its president. And for you, they can complain all they want; it's
really none of your business, right?
Students now pay as much as N40 as transport fare for short distances
just within the University campus, such that by the time one is done
with their lectures and other activities within the campus, they are
spending close to N200 naira daily on just transport fare within the
campus. And this is not really the fault of the drivers. Hillary, in
this case you are the one extorting from the good students of Unizik
through the exorbitant levies you impose on the drivers daily. In turn
the drivers push back the expences to the students to bear the final
blunt. When the SUG Night held last year, a lot of innocent students
were badly injured by the thugs you positioned at the school gate to
extort N200 from each of the thousands of the students who had trooped
out to participate in the yearly show. That show had always been
totally free, being the only major social event organized by the SUG
for the students, each of whom had already paid the SUG Dues through
their school fees. In the end, all the students who had attended that
event went home full of consternation, for not only was the show a
total flop ("the worst SUG night ever", said one of the students who
had attended), but they had been forced to pay to attend their own
event.
I was at the University Hostels recently to meet with the students
living there. The University Hostels, as you know, represents the true
community of students of Unizik. Basically, they were the ones that
voted you in, and I was the one that took you to them to beg for their
endorsement, with you pledging to stay close to them, and help solve
their problems, if you became President. Now, more than a year after,
they lamented that you've never as much as set your feet into the
Hostels since you became President, talk more of helping to solve
their problems.
Generally this is what the students of Unizik have to say about your
presidency, "we only know that we still have SUG or an SUG President
just when he (the president) cruises past on Unizik roads with his
official vehicle, blowing dust on all of our faces, without remorse".
I was discussing with some of the university staff few days ago, and
one of the staff told me that when he tried to caution you over your
inordinate arrogance and despicably poor performance as the student's
president, this was what you replied him, "no matter how much anybody
complains, it can never remove even a single hair from my skin". So my
question remains, Hillary how could you allow yourself to become this
despicable?
Your failures as SUG President of the giant Nnamdi Azikiwe University
abounds, but, of course, it would be wrong of anybody to blame you
solely for the ignoble failures of the SUG. The mess didn't start with
you. As a matter of fact, the President before you so neglected the
students and their welfare that we thought that there couldn't
possibly be anything worse than that, nor that any worse president
could ever emerge for the SUG. Alas! You have broken all records of
leadership failures locally and nationally. The Union had been
critically sick since 2003; you merely brought death upon it. You've
ended the life of Unionism in Unizik in a very unceremonious manner.
I remember discussing with Prof Ike Odimegwu, Chairman ASUU Unizik
some months back about the state of the students union government of
the school; when I asked him his opinion about performance of the
current SUG, he simply replied, "I don't know if there is any Students
Union Government President here, or is there? I'm even not aware
there's a students Unionism in Unizik, not to talk of a government of
that Union". And I was embarrassed on your behalf, Mr. President. But
most importantly I felt sorry for the students of Unizik who have lost
all feeling of prestige and respect because their President and the
entire government he leads have merely deteriorated to a pitiable
caricature to the generality of the university system.
I always come close to shedding tears each time I remember what you
presented yourself to be prior to your election, which is an alarming
contrast to what you have become since you were elected. It simply
speaks volumes of the unimaginable extent of deceitfulness and
untrustworthiness a human can deteriorate to. And your ignoble
failures have made me even more afraid of the future of Nigeria
because the youth, like you, who are expected to discharge energetic
and corrupt-free leadership in whatever positions they are privileged
to be in have continually shown that they are even worse than the old
corrupt folks ruling our country today. Thus our future is certainly
in peril. This brings to mind the total failure of National
Association of Nigerian Students(NANS). While the students were at
home wasting due to the last ASUU strike, Yinka Gbadebo, the NANS
President was busy moving about with the PDP guber candidate in the
last Anambra guber election. And after he had obviously collected
enough monetary settlement from the said candidate, he climbed the PDP
campaign stage to declare that he was moving the NANS headquarters to
Anambra State until the election was over. And he fulfilled his
promise considering the alarming number of strange-faced thugs that
were seen roaming about all corners of the state during that period.
And but for the strong intervention of the Police and military, the
election would've witnessed a free-for-all thuggery during that
election. This is merely what students unionism has been reduce to in
Nigeria today, which is in sharp contrast with the students' unionism
of some decades ago. There were years ago when the voices and
agitation of the Nigerian students through their union leaders were
feared by even the most fierce of military Presidents of Nigeria. Take
for instance the students agitation against the Structural Adjustment
Program (SAP) policy of Babangida military Administration. During that
period the students were able to get the military government to change
their infamous policy. Other examples abound. But not anymore. Right
now, NANS has become an appendage of the government in power; indeed
the youth organ of the PDP.
So, Hillary, my question is, don't you think we (the students) will be
better without the SUG at all? Indeed, I recommend that the SUG be
scrapped to alleviate the frustrating hopelessness of the students who
have already given up. But for now, as the new SUG president gets
ready to take over from you soon, do me this favour: don't fail to
tell your successor that though you have made a lot of money from your
Presidency, yet you have felt no happiness, because none have spoken a
good word about you, and because all around you, you have perceived
nothing more than failure. Advice him to pursue good name first and
material gains will surely follow. And my last request is that you
should do the society a great favour by subsequently avoiding to hold
any further position(s) of leadership anywhere whatsoever, for as you
have proven beyond doubts, leadership is really not one of your gifts.
Sincerely Yours,
Comr. Agu David
