Greatness lies not in being strong, but the right use of strength. Greatness is not just about size, brawn or the ability to intimidate, but in the ability to fully deploy all tools available for the achievement of the intended goal.
By way of introduction, let me ask, dear colleagues, are we really GREAT? Is this Great Ife? Is this the best Great Ife can offer? Was a lecture boycott and closure of school gate the best thing our collective intellect could think of? Ask your conscience, if it still breathes, couldn’t there have been a more effective way of doing things?
Call me reactionary, conservative, I don’t care. I stand for what I believe in. I’m not like some SU leaders who have feet of clay that can be washed away by the mob. Since we claim to have been agitating for better welfare conditions, how on Earth would a lecture boycott and forceful kicking out of students from Angola and Moz achieved that? If a leadership has to force its followers to follow it, then clearly such leadership has no legitimacy and has lost the ability to convince its followers to stand by it. And yet these ones call themselves “Intellectual Fighters for Emancipation”.
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We could have effectively gotten our message across by effective use of the social media, using trendy hashtags, engaging the press, while having meetings with the school management. We could have triggered a social media uproar, causing embarrassment to the school management, and gaining concessions from them. All it took was some pictures of raggedy beds from UNILAG for both the UNILAG and OAU school management to embark on a fumigation exercise.
Like me, hate me, but I’ll still say it. The “radical” approach is dead. The last time it was a powerful weapon against the school management was in 1999. In today’s world, wars are not won by the size of one’s army or their noise, but the brain of the General.
OAU CHRISTIANS 