*Governor Dave Umahi: A Leprosy To The Growth And Development of Ebonyi State University*

It is five years and five months of Umahi as a Governor of Ebonyi State and the Ivory Tower ever valued and cherished by all and sundry can’t breathe again because of his unfriendly and callous approaches to handling of the activities of the University.

Recall that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is an umbrella body housing the academic staff of public universities in Nigeria (Federal and State). As a union of intellectuals, ASUU seeks not only the socio-political and economic interest of its members within the framework of promoting the cause of university education in Nigeria, but also holds government to a standstill over the revitalization of Nigerian Universities.

In the wake of this struggle, government saw the need to establish Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), which is simply a fund for training and retraining of the university staff and revitalization of universities’ infrastructural development both the federal and the state owned universities. Regrettably, the information available on our desk is that the sectional TETFUND monies (billions of naira) allocated to Ebonyi State University has been diverted severally by the same man who is vehemently bent on destroying the labor of our heroes. When we went for our fact finding tour in the University, a concerned staff who preferred anonymity took us to the abandoned TETFUND faculty building and said “…this is the handiwork of a man that refused to fund the university, yet can’t allow a TETFUND allocation of the university to be.” In a nutshell, Dave has STIFFED and SNUFFED the Ivory Tower that was once the pride of the salt city.

We also gathered that five good years of Dave’s reign as the governor of Ebonyi State, staff promotion (Academic and Non-academic) of the university has been stagnated, and few of his cronies that were promoted never had any financial benefit as at the time of filling this report. Consequently, there has been an inglorious exodus of the academic staff of the university to the AE-FUNAI, many of which were trained in Europe and America by the founder of the Ivory Tower Sam Ominye Egwu, PhD, and whose mantra was “Education is the solution to our backwardness.” Oh! We have lost it!!

We were informed too, that as at 2015 governor Dave took over office, that the subvention of the university was three hundred and fifty million naira (#350,000,000), but has slashed it to one hundred and seventeen million naira (#117,000,000). And I ask, who advised Dave of this inglorious visit in EBSU? Aren’t you aware that university is not a profit making venture, rather a long term investment plan geared towards human development? For anything to worth the name “development”, must hitherto, be able to have a corresponding impact on the lives of those involved. If there are building in schools for instance, without a corresponding manpower to teaching the students, it is simply “hollow” and baseless. On this note Your Excellency, we know that your children are in Europe and America, and consequently has nothing to do with the Ivory Tower, but look with pity upon us, our younger ones, and generations unborn and consolidate on the dreams of the founder-SENATOR, EGWU because undoubtedly, education is the most potent weapon for any country that wishes to develop.

And know it too, that the political Professor, Chigozie Ogbu whom you handpicked as the Vice Chancellor of the University of course, he is your brother is not a regular university class room Professor, hence has no university administrative acumen to carry on with the extant rules guarding university system in Nigeria. Hopefully, you did it because of your calculated and envisioned plan to snuff the Ivory Tower. How can a University be so down not to have a functional WiFi even in the administrative building? During our fact finding tour, we entered one of the principal officers’ office, and they were shamelessly asking for who to on a hotspot for them to access official document in email, and I was shocked to bone marrow. EBSU is dead!

They took us too, Your Excellency, to where you colonized and built multiples of storey buildings (hostels) as a personal asset in the university land while the university itself has no students’ hostel. Who told you that you are going to be a lifetime governor? Now we know all these things, be rest assured that you are not God and surely we will ask questions in just two years and seven months.

In our last outing, we queried your blunt refusal to pay EBSU staff their salaries for four months now, why the principal officers not having official cars, poor funding, and your personal attachment to the university as it should be a world of its own. I leave you with the famous dictum of Martin Luther King Jr. “…the Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.” Heed to advice