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I was inducted into a school of thought that holds the belief that Doctors of Philosophy (PHD holders), Associate Professors, Professors and Emeritus Professors are strictly intellectuals while those who failed to belong into the class of the aforementioned are far from being one. It is not my fault. That was what the university taught me in my first year as an undergraduate and I passionately imprint it on my forehead. I had to baptize myself out of this dogma when the then Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Idowu Bamitale Omole shut down the school because of students protest against the outrageous increment in tuition fee. The news blew out our unconsciousness like a busted over-blown balloon. It was then that I thought of conducting a research on the word “Intellectualism”. While I was trying to pick my matriculation photographs in order to embark on a scholarly trip since the school had been shut down, then my attention was drawn to a news report from print media that the school was shut down because of a heated students protest where properties were vandalized, cars were destroyed and burnt. To further foreground the authenticity of the report, the reports featured pictorial evidences of vandalized properties and burnt cars which they got through the school management. I could not help laughing and wondering at the same time because as an active character on the protest stage, I do not need an oracle to tell me how the protest went. Animistically, OAU bats can bear witness that no property were vandalized and no vehicle was burnt.

This development further compounded my worrisome position on the word “Intellectualism”. I wondered and pondered on how the supposed intellectuals could deviate from commonplace and I threw rhetorics in the wind. How did they create those pictures? Where did those misleading pictures came from? Is there another OAU apart from the one I know? All I got was a disturbing silence from my mind. Then I concluded that Intellectualism means different thing to different people. To those in the academics, Intellectualism could mean the ability to make acceptable or believable lies and the gift of lack of crisis management. By implication, those who possess these skills are automatically intellectuals.

In line with the spirit of these letters, I must bring to your sense of consciousness that shutting down of universities by these academic warlords has become too unbecoming that they have through this, project their lack of crisis management to a common tout on the street. Shutting down of universities mean that a country should also be shut down whenever there is a minor or major crisis. If these professors are allowed to rule this country, they will prefer shutting the country down because they cannot manage the crisis that this country is being confronted with. They failed at the microscopic level because they lack the skill of crisis management. One should give kudos to the president of this country for his managerial skills because those who says that the university is a place where the ills of the society is to be corrected has failed the university and the society. Thanks to the creative and improvisation skills of the people in the “society ".

Currently, Obafemi Awolowo University is under closure because the out gone vice chancellor, Professor Bamitale Omole could not manage other stakeholders in the university accordingly. The consequence of his inefficiencies and incompetence made him to shut down the school at the last minute of his exit as the Vice Chancellor of the university. No wonder why NASU and SSANU consider him as a living ghost. The emergence of Professor Ayobami Salami as the dissolved OAU governing council‘s Vice Chancellor, has become a riddle that only the dead can solve. The dissolution of OAU governing council by the federal government is a welcome development but it is long overdue. While I was trying to shower encomiums on the federal government for their brilliant move, I was cautioned by adequate reasoning and subjected to the supremacy of common sense and in a rapid succession like a fast-forward motion picture, it dawned on me that the federal government deliberately fail to appoint an Acting Vice Chancellor for the Crisis-ridden university(OAU). This is a coup against the promising future of the entire students of Obafemi Awolowo University because if the federal government is truly interested in qualitative education and the good future of the innocent students of Obafemi Awolowo University, they would have appointed an acting Vice Chancellor immediately after the dissolution of the governing council. The federal government headed by President Muhammadu Buhari should stop mocking the plights of Great Ife Students, they should as a matter of necessity, urgency and duty appoint and announce an acting Vice Chancellor for Obafemi Awolowo University in the next seven days or else, we would as a matter of sensitivity translate their silence and paralinguistic signal to mean that the current federal government is only interested in maltreating the youth, playing gulf with their promising future and mocking the strength of Nigerian youths. After seven days, if the federal government should fail to heed to the yearnings of his people by announcing an acting Vice Chancellor for the school that would seek to the reopening of the school for academic activities to begin, If they play deaf and allow Great Ife students to continue to be a scape –goat, then the entire great Ife Students would be forced to occupy sensitive places in this country in defining what democracy and governance is.

OLATUNDE BUSAYO SOLOMON (O.BUSAYO MFR) WRITES FROM HIS CHAMBERS OF LETTTERS IN ILE-IFE
busayoolatunde@gmail.com
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Cc:
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We don't want to become miscreants in the society we don't want to become touts we don't want to become robbers we want Education

#ReOpenOAU

OAU is just a replica of the past. The school is gone. Thank God am outta that place. So bad an administration!