It is the first university to get a radio station and the only one in the country so far to get a television station for the training of its mass communication students: My two degrees in mass communication have an admirable stamp of approval from there. Two of my children also earned their pips as graduates of that respected institution.
I decided to meet the two officials who are also eminent alumni of the university and see if they would let me work with other alumni to get whatever was the matter resolved. The two men were gracious enough to grant me audience during which they also willingly gave me some documents on the issues in contention. I called Dr. John Momoh, President of the Alumni Association and Chairman of Channels Television to inform him of what I was working on.
That letter, toxic, dripping with violence is the equivalent of a loaded gun that is ready to do what loaded guns do. Whatever message he intended to convey to the Minister was tragically vitiated by the violent and uncouth language deployed in the letter. Of course, I am aware of the agbero politics currently played by Nigerian politicians, most of them behaving like motor park touts.
It didn’t come. And then they repeated it recently. They held a Congress meeting and actually declared again that Babalakin must not step into UNILAG, he will not be welcome. Were all the professors of law in that university on vacation abroad, that they could not tell the misguided unionists that freedom of movement in Nigeria is guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution. UNILAG is a public place, not ASUU’s private parlour from which it can arrogantly issue dictatorial directives.
We went that low but analysts blamed this on the sycophancy of many university professors who were crawling and hustling at the corridors of power, begging to be crowned Vice Chancellors. They had no idea that there is no free lunch and that they were mortgaging their academic freedom in the process. In the same manner, the ASUU leadership in Unilag that seeks to take away the freedom of the Pro-Chancellor seems unable to understand that what goes around comes around.