Power: An  aphrodisiac

• • What future for Igueben College?

By Osazua IVBAZE

In my interrogation of political power as a bystander of history, I have long discovered the similarity it shares with the detergent soap when stirred in a bowl of water.

Take a handful of Omo detergent soap, pour it in water and stir. What do you see?

It gives off beautiful white bubbles: or effervescence.

But soon, the bubbles, after few minutes of contact with air, dissolves in a whiff and is seen no more.

Such is the nature of political power. It is transient. It is not a lifetime property of anyone.
Unfortunately, most of those who get into power by the instrumentality of Providence do not realize that there is a date with history. While basking in the glow and klieg lights of power, a good number of politicians do no allow their actions to be moderated by the reality of transiency and lessons of history.

Power as a form of aphrodisiac, is dangerous in the hands of those who do not know what it should be used for and to whom it actually belongs.

Power belongs to the people — those elected to wield it ought to be doing so on their behalf.
In Representative democracy, the people speak and act through their elected ones .

I have meticulously followed the conversation on government action on College of Education, Igueben . I have noted the sophistry in some presentations and the seemingly ingenious attempt to make excuses for government.

However, in this attempt to be clever by half, nobody has been able to tear through the fundamental import and weight of the word ‘ defunct”

Is the College metamorphosing into a University. That would be a fleeting illusion. Even if it were so, or the College is to be upgraded for something better, do you need to shut it down to do so.!!

College of Education Abraka birthed Delta State University without closing down the environment. It was simply a name change, upgrade of facilities and recruitment of qualified academic staff.

What is it that the government wants to turn Igueben College into that requires that it must first be shut down. The present infrastructures in the college are good enough to start even a University.

Advertisement

Ambrose Alli did not have the luxury of any infrastructures to start a University. Ujoelen Grammar School provided some of its blocks for the University to birth.

And for those, who for purely partisan inclinations have opted for unsolicited defence of government action, please be sure of what you are giving out for public consumption. There is history on the highway that you would have to wrestle with when the chips are down.

In a presidential democracy of Nigerian variant, where the Legislature has been turned into an extension of the Executive, the principles of checks and balances can only be attained in the domain of a mirage.
If anything, the reality on ground is that it is the Executive that is actually checking the Legislature– instead of the other way round.

Nobody can convince me that the House of Assembly has the political verve to sway Obaseki away from whatever plans he has, once his mind is made up– even if the plans are not in the interest of public good.