A CHAPTER FROM THE STORY OF MY LIFE Part 3: While the race was on for who would succeed Alex Mamchika as SUG President, I had an advantage none of my opponents had. I was President of the students in Faculty of Engineering. That meant I had the power to send nominees from my domain into the SUG Care-Taker and Electoral Committees. For strategic reasons however, I was more interested in the Electoral Committee (ELCOM). I was to send two heavyweights to wrestle against each other for the chairmanship of the ELCOM, one a Christian and the other a Muslim. I wanted that position because I have always trusted in popularity and goodwill to win elections. I dont rig, and if I am to sustain the same philosophy in that race, I wanted to stop any other aspirant or party from rigging. To fortify my fortress of support, I had an alliance with a coalition of progressive minds in Kongo Campus. Their nomenclature was Kongo Republicans and they were to provide me with a running-mate from their expansive membership. Everything appeared to be working well and I was set to make my first public release indicative of the interest I nursed for the Student Union Presidency when the unexpected happened. Just a day to the end of Mamchikas tenure, he made a publication, informing the university community of the negotiation he had with management about a new regime of school fees increment. Because prices seldom go down in Nigeria once they go up, Mamchika agreed to an increase in school fees from N19, 000 to a figure more than triple that amount. Through that publication, he flirted with the wrath of the students he swore to protect, thus bringing into historical existence the 2007 Students Unrest at the largest university south of the Sahara and north of the Limpopo, the only true cosmopolitan educational habitat in Nigeria and the cradle of indigenous intellectual, economic, and sociopolitical expeditions on the history, existence and future of our country. For an institution like Ahmadu Bello University Zaria with a rich history of activism and prominent adherence to marxism, the ideological albeit, violent convulsion which brought the school to its knees in 2007 was to be expected many years after Ango-Must-Go struggle and the tales of Comrade Maradona. This is because there was massive dissatisfaction among many students as a result of management’s desire to impose a dress code policy which many believed was “controversial”. There was also the cancellation of MTN’s nationwide campus storm/show when it came to Zaria, due to physical resistance by individuals believed to be members of Muslim Students Society, a development which angered many liberal minded students leading to a protest bravely led by Benjamin Dzer. These among many other random events like a publication said to be authored by Muslim Students Society banning female Students from visiting male hostels, provided fuel to further escalate crises in the school. I was in church that fateful Thursday night at the Chapel of Redemption being a member of Students Life Movement, an arm of Great Commission Movement of Nigeria, when my phone rang and a voice which sounded afflicted with the dementia of anger begged me to join them at Suleiman Hall that very moment. I later gathered that when the students began chanting songs of solidarity to express their vexation about Mamchikas last deeds as their leader, they decided I was the only one they trusted to lead them in protest against the establishment. Looking back, I dont blame them, because with a record replete with instances of confrontation with oppression in alutaristic fashion, I would also line up behind me if I wasnt me. So, I reported as summoned, and it was as though the whole of that residency was outside by the Notice Board. I read the publication and struggled to hear grievances conveyed in a cacophony of voices from the crowd which had assembled to challenge what they perceived as capitalist wickedness and administrative insensitivity. When the voices finally faded into a vacuum of silence, standing on a platform with my right hand raised in a fist above my head, I shouted “Greatest Nigerian Students!…..” …to be continued
Posted on: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 06:31:31 +0000
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