When two elephants fight
Zahra Buhari, the 20-year-old daughter of Dr Nasir Ado Bayero, the Emir of Bichi and Farida Imam, recently graduated with first-class honours in Architectural Sciences from an ‘abroad’ university and was celebrated on social media by her very proud mother-in-law, Aisha Buhari. Aisha can be proud of her son’s wife ooo. To get first class […]
Zahra Buhari, the 20-year-old daughter of Dr Nasir Ado Bayero, the Emir of Bichi and Farida Imam, recently graduated with first-class honours in Architectural Sciences from an ‘abroad’ university and was celebrated on social media by her very proud mother-in-law, Aisha Buhari. Aisha can be proud of her son’s wife ooo. To get first class is not akamu, after all. However, to be as tone deaf as to do it so publicly while ASUU is still on strike is something else entirely. These people do not rate ordinary Nigerians at all, at all.
Of course, folks complained (with good reason), and the emir’s media aide, Abdallah Garkuwa, put out an astounding ‘press release’ on social media that basically translated to: shut up you plebs, Zahra’s father was a billionaire before she married your president’s son. He didn’t really say it in those words. What he wrote (which isn’t much better than my translation) was “She is not Buhari’s daughter. She is the daughter of Nasiru Ado Bayero, the emir (sic) of Bichi. Her father is a Billionaire (sic) even before she married Yusuf, Buhari’s son. Case close(sic)!!”
No sir, nothing like case closed ooo. Mrs. Aisha Buhari, Madam First Lady, should have had enough common sense to not flaunt graduations in her family from foreign universities in the midst of a strike in its seventh month in her own country. You know how long seven months is? A woman in her first trimester pregnant at the beginning of the strike should be nursing a baby now. My neighbour’s baby who was five months at the start of the strike has just turned one. Celebrate your daughter-in-law all you want, Madam, but do so in the privacy of your home. However, perhaps it’s not common-sense Mrs. Buhari lacks, but sensitivity, empathy and decency. Any combination of these traits would have made her too embarrassed to post the pictures she did. Our university students are at home frustrated. It’s bad enough that they see their mates whose parents can afford to send to private universities in the same Naija progressing, they do not need to see their leaders’ families rubbing their ability to send their children abroad to school in their faces too. Haba!
I remember being home because of ASUU strike. I know how frustrated I was. These young men and women at home now need an outlet for their frustration. During one of these perennial strikes – and I shared it then- a professor said a student of hers used the time to write a novel and she encouraged others to do so. Good on that student. However, we must acknowledge that while it’s easy to say that students should pick up a hobby, learn a trade, use this time as an opportunity to do something useful, anger and frustration can paralyse one’s desire to do anything useful. Months-long strike isn’t a gift given to Naija students to expand their extracurricular portfolio. It’s time stolen from them. Plus, it’d be naïve to think that these students are all able to find positive ways to deal with all the unplanned time they have on their hands.
We know how the devil finds work for idle hands. Some of these youth who would have been furthering their education, progressing in their dreams have likely become thugs-in-training for the upcoming elections in addition to whatever else the devil finds for them to do. Some of these students may never return to school. It is sobering to think of young people, going through secondary school, entering university full of dreams and enthusiasm, only for both their joy of learning and their dreams to be snuffed out by a failure in leadership.
I did not think I’d be writing about ASUU strike so soon again but needs must. We can never complain too much of dysfunction, abi? If ours were a better country, the families of our political elite would be leading by example. Their children would be getting quality education at, and graduating from our public universities. I’ve previously stated that perhaps all these universities abroad should keep the children of our political leaders ( and their associates) away from lectures for as long as our public universities are on strike so that they are forced into the shoes of ordinary Nigerians to be pinched similarly too. Maybe that way, they can grow some empathy as well.
I have read/seen arguments that the government isn’t solely to blame for these strikes, ASUU has some responsibility too. Whatever the case is, the irrefutable fact is that the victims are the innocent students impacted by the industrial action. Our students are the grass upon which two elephants are fighting. I hope that they can return to school soon. I wish them strength to stay the course. May their successes be only delayed, not denied.