By Ken Adefolaju Adewale
EKITI PEOPLE’S MANDATE*
The fracas in Oye Ekiti and the attendant loss of lives penultimate Tuesday clearly remains unfortunate, regrettable and avoidable. Two undergraduates of the Federal University, Oye Ekiti fell to police bullets as the students tried engaging the delegation of the State’s First Lady, Mrs Bisi Fayemi over the problems facing them in the university. Lack of electricity was mentioned but there are other issues that prompted the students to rise up in protest. There had been insinuations as to the role played by Mrs Fayemi who was visiting Oye Ekiti on tour of Local Government Areas of the state; with many suggesting she ordered her police escort to shoot at the students.
So, how did Bisi Fayemi end up in the present tight corner? How can she wriggle out of it? It doesn’t have to end like this for some simple reasons. Mrs Fayemi, so far, has made a very impressive showing in this role of First Ladyship. It helps that she took over from an almost uninspiring and unwilling First Lady; but importantly her zeal and creativity have shown over the past months – since her husband returned to power- through involvement in policy advocacy, grassroots empowerment and social inclusion programmes in Ekiti. And she was doing well until that fateful Tuesday. And then ‘Rere Run’
In the public space presently are misplaced multifaceted arguments as to what Mrs Fayemi did and what she did not do as opposed to unearthing the root causes of the fiasco that condescended to tragedy and loss of limbs in Oye. Conspiracy theorists are building their argument on the principle of vicarious liability and the unrestrained manner her security apparatus responded to a mere student riot. The protest songs may not be so sincere it’s definitely the opposition’s way to express their disagreement with the way ‘Ekiti is being run like a fiefdom of a posturing first lady’. We might return to that especially the inglorious role of men of the Nigerian Police force in the extra judicial murders of students in Oye Ekiti. But what are the immediate and remote causes of the Oye tragedy? What are the larger sticking points?
Truth be told; the FUOYE fiasco is a case study in how things could go wrong so swiftly when small matters with potent capacity to expand to bigger calamities are treated with levity and complacency. The long standing disquiet in FUOYE is akin to a stream disregarded by the farmer but has now turned full circle into a ravaging flood threatening to uproot and destroy legacies and beautiful edifices.
It need not be.
As early as July this year, the Ekiti Peoples’ Mandate – a non-partisan pressure Group has hinted of rain drops in FUOYE and the need for the Ekiti State government to unfurl an umbrella to contain the waters that has now massed into a ravaging flood. Official intervention as advised then would have forestalled the kind of calamity that manifested in that bloodshed. The protracted issues at FUOYE have been left to fester for too long.
And the issues are legion. Remotely, they triggered the sad development of penultimate Tuesday. The absence of electricity has dominated headlines but administrative incompetence, recriminations, serious injustices, sexual harassments and other dysfunctional situations are the larger issues causing disaffection among students and teachers/administrators at FUOYE. The resultant effect is that FUOYE students have become – in their highly vulnerable state- very frustrated, disenchanted and very surrounded endangered species restricted into their ‘darkness’ in Oye.
That was the monster that confronted Bisi Fayemi and her more prosperous entourage that fateful day. The anger and the fury that greeted her and her crowd in Oye Ekiti were clearly the outcome of pent up anger built up over the time. Perhaps a smarter intelligence system would have picked the signals and advised against the Obinrin Kete tour of Oye and Ikole that day.
The Ekiti State Government despite prompts and warning on the time bomb that FUOYE is becoming has unfortunately continued to sit on the fence; hiding under the guise that FUOYE belongs to the federal government. It’s partly this inaction and lethargy that gave rise to the anger and the angst displayed by the students during the visit of Mrs Fayemi. Imagine a university without electricity supply for months. How many of us would be proud to send our wards and kids to such institution in this age? What kind of products would a university – operating in darkness –produce both in terms of learning and character? Could those monsters seen on video, running wild like feral gangs possibly be the creation of a government that has forsaken them? The answer unfortunately is Yes. FUOYE has been neglected for too long. It’s student forsaken and forgotten with ill motivated work force. And that’s taking it naively that electricity is the only and main issue bedevilling this upstart but promising institution.
There are more graver issues worth mentioning in dispatches: administrative high handedness, allegations of salary scam against top management staff, discontented non-academic staff, protracted war with ASUU, sexual harassment of students, scandals of rape of teenage undergraduate students by Professors at the university, financial improprieties etc. Mrs Bisi Fayemi is known as a gender activist and an avowed advocate against gender based violence. It’s surprising that she has not thought it worthwhile to direct her searchlight to the ugly sexual violence going on in FUOYE. Why and how widely reported sexual harassment of teenage undergraduates by FUOYE professors and other gender violence in the university in Oye are not being captured by her anti gender violence advocacy is baffling.
Indeed, rape has been officially declared high crime by the Ekiti State Government. Its Ministry of Justice recently declared the official policy of Naming and shaming of rapist and the publication of sex offenders register thrown into the bargain. Sad unfortunately too that none of the randy professors in FUOYE have been caught and arraigned and brought to book despite evidences of their malfeasance in public domain. The law in Ekiti has left them loose, unrestrained to unleash horror on hapless young students. This is an institutional failing. Reports are in public space of how randy teachers go on sex spree harassing young teenagers in spite of repeated publication of how a FUOYE professor raped a teenage undergraduate and forced her to abort the pregnancy right inside the hall of residence. How these heinous crime against hapless students in an academic environment continues to escape official scrutiny and the intervention of the Ekiti State Ministry of Justice require explanations. It does no justice to the social reengineering project of value restoration of the Fayemi government.
Indeed so, the unruly behaviour of FUOYE students can cleverly be explained away by some of these institutional failings and that’s not necessarily endorsing the violence. What do reasonable members of the community expect from already traumatised and very vulnerable students that are being plagued daily by sex hungry lecturers? What do we expect from frustrated under aged undergraduates that are subjected to indiscriminate raping and sexual bullying by their teachers? The helpless and indignant treatment of their worried male colleagues horrified by the recklessness of Professors that impregnate their women folks with impunity? Harassed youngsters pushed to the wall by incompetent administrative lapses and very dissatisfied workforce?
The resultant effect of this is what manifested when the students saw one of their oppressors in person of the first lady. Truth is that FUOYE students have indeed become very marginalised, neglected and vulnerable. Their vulnerability simply found expressions in frustration and deep disenchantment with the State. That was the monster that confronted Bisi Fayemi and her entourage. It’s no rocket science therefore knowing why so much venom got poured on the Obinrin Ekiti Kete dignitaries in Oye Ekiti penultimate Tuesday.
It is not too much and certainly not too late now for the Ekiti state government to intervene in the FUOYE debacle in so many ways within its power and competent jurisdiction as a ‘landlord’. Among others it could help in facilitating the constitution of a *visitation panel for this university*.
It’s long overdue. Yes, FUOYE is a federal institution, but Ekiti has huge stake in seeing that the many wrongs in that institutions are ‘righted’, for peace to reign, for justice to be seen done and for scholarship to strive.
Imagine a comatose and problematic FUOYE for a moment. Of what benefits would that be to Ekiti?