Great Ife! A charade is on. This period of Elections of the Student Union of Obafemi University has started an ember we must quench before it turns into an inferno. I am not a bearer of evil tidings, but you must know that the inferno will consume its initiators and every other person close enough to feel its flames. Many SU aspirants have gone on a demonstration of money aggrandisement. The election has become a naira-and-kobo muscling contest.
Whatever actions we take today, whatever precedents we lay, whatever standards we evolve shall culminate to become the fabric of a new Nigeria being clamoured for from older adults close to their graves and even to a foetus who are yet to become babies. This newness shall result from our leadership compass in our various immediate communities.
Unionism, as we know it and as it were, is not a show of wealth but a show of intellect. The age-old culture offers a level playing ground for all. The core focus is to mine the best brains, not belittled by the basis of bread in their coffers. Against this backdrop, the price tag for all offices from top to bottom is pegged at 200 NGN. An indication that the measure of a leader is not the weight of his wallet but the depth of his understanding, and s/he must rule with his intellect as his compass, not his wealth as his throne. The mark of a true leader is not the fatness of his bank account but the durability of his ideas.
Will it not be disappointing, if not disillusioned, for a community of educated individuals to allow themselves to be conned, derailed, and persuaded with the number of resources put on show?
Obafemi Awolowo University is an academic environment – a community dedicated to learning, training people’s minds, and fine-tuning their orientation. The curated process is to infuse logicality in you and your manner of reasoning. Expand your worldview and universal perspective. The necessary consequence of these is its reflection in Nigerian society.
Great Ife, there is a distinct line of thought which separates you from someone who is not within this wall. Someone whose mind is untouched, untrained, and uncultivated. The demonstration of ‘who has who’ and ‘who has what’ has so much characterised this present SU election. The focus is being unscrupulously shifted away from the content of the mind to the content of the pocket. Quite alarming!
What is more alarming is that you, who have spent reasonable amounts of time coupled with near-suicidal efforts within this wall, are easily enticed by the extent of an aspirant’s financial buoyancy. Rather than their mental agility, which is proportionate to the office they are vying for.
As it were since the time of our compatriot, George Iwilade (Afrika), the more you display wealth directly disconnected from your capacity to perform, the more you’re bound to lose and lose woefully. This is a call to aspirants to show us what they can do, not how much they can spend. The entirety of Great Ife must move the lens away from the latter. But if your line of thought is based on this, it could mean two things. If you’ve not been affected and impacted by your time here, and if you have myopic hindsight or deliberately nurture a feigned jaundiced view. Suppose we cannot judge aspirants by their mental capacity in a setting of ‘educated’ individuals such as this. Our evaluation ability is no different from a bike man analysis at a newspaper stand. It could be better if you were not here at all.
Monday Folaranmi is a penultimate student of law at Obafemi Awolowo University.