02/05/2022
THE EBONYI INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITY; THE STORY OF A HERD OF DONKEYS.
Ebonyi people must get serious. The lazy intellectuals mostly. Yes, not the lazy youths. I think they're more cowardly than the finches. In other climes education bequeathes confidence but it's not so in our part of the world. The so-called learned people are too frightened. They not only fear for themselves but fear for others. That's how badly they want their low self-esteem to go round. They hear or read a concerned citizen reorientating the people and condemning an age long malpractice by politicians while proffering solutions for progress and they start peeing in their pants on their behalf.
"Do you want to die young? Keep quiet and leave politicians alone." They sneak into your inbox to say.
They go back to the classrooms with an abstract heroism that exists only in their heads. They don't even teach well. A hungry teacher without confidence cannot teach anything meaningful. They return everyday to their families in their two-bedroom apartment, angry and sad because the politician they fear have refused to pay their meagre salaries and allowances. Some of them dissipate their anger on the wrong subjects, they venge their frustration on their innocent wives, children and students. Yet they refuse to see how they can change their situation by getting involved in the system. They continue until they die in penury while their helpless children inherit the poverty and cowardice left behind.
The pride of these primitive intellectuals anchors on nothing in particular. You can't say that they are wise because wisdom indeed has no relationship with poverty, fear and inaction. They are good at cautioning that you shouldn't talk so that your life can be preserved but without talking themselves, they get down with one of the numerous poverty predisposing diseases and die while the politician lives, enjoying life and affording the best of medicare for themselves and their family abroad. These intellectuals leave you wondering the gains of silence.
You may say I'm sounding a bit harsh but it's good sometimes to sound so. Because our people say that it gets to a point where you cover your face with a basket and speak truth to an elder. The intellectual community in Ebonyi State is grossly cowardly. They have allowed themselves to be pocketed for too long. They must wake up. Today, an opportunity stands on their doorstep. They have one vibrant and competent colleague of theirs, a university don, stepping out to change this sorry narrative but they're too scared to lend their support. They're too afraid to have an opinion. They've chosen to play the donkey, and the story of the donkey is sad one. A 5-year old sticks a knife into its throat, tenderly severing the carotid and windpipe but it can't run or mount any resistance. It stands there moaning and shedding tears until it dies. That is the same sad story of the intellectual community in Ebonyi State. They're are a drove of donkeys.
It's time to approach things differently. Politics is not a game at all. It shouldn't be left for the current pack of puerile vagabonds carrying truncal obesity up and down, ignorantly trading the future of everyone under the guise that politics is just a game. Politics is about the most serious business anywhere in the world. Because the decision of these lots affects every other sector including how the doctor manages their sick patients and how the farmer tills their farm land. If you can't come out on the field this time then use your classrooms and every necessary channel of yours to stir up political consciousness in your students. You have an obligation to train them in both character and learning so they can be useful to themselves and the society. So they won't be used as agents of manipulation. Enough of the mediocrity. Enough of the fear. Be the voice you should.
Ebonyi deserves better. Only the best is good enough. Talking blunt.
©Obinna Oke
