Prof! Prof! Prof, you picked my call today? Chai, rain will fall o.
Ai tete mole… So how are you doing, my son? Good to hear from you today o. In fact, you are your father’s son. I was just reading about the yawa in your school today and thinking about you.
But Prof, it’s not good o, you are not going to write about it?
Why should I?
Prof, but you said you have read the news now. They increased our school fees just like that. From N145,000 to N160,000. Our school has been closed.
That your Ambrose Alli University sef. Yes, I read the news on Sahara Reporters but I still don’t know why you are saying I must write about it.
Well, Prof, if your people at Sahara carried it, you should also support us now.
Well, you do know that I have a life outside of Nigeriana, don’t you? Besides, I don’t see any reason why the new school fees should be a problem for you, I mean you in particular.
Ah, Prof, please o, which one are you saying again? Yawa gas for your son o.
Well, you are forgetting that you are one undergraduate whose Wall I follow because you are one of my many adopted sons in Nigerian Universities. How have you been reacting all day to the major headline on that same Sahara Reporters?
Prof, you mean that nonsense news about our former first lady?
Yes, that is what I mean. Shebi you have been abusing Sahara Reporters and doing APC versus PDP, Buhari versus Jonathan all over the place since morning. Now that you have exhausted the most productive part of your day defending our former first lady and abusing Sahara Reporters for partisanship, you finally remember your school fees and you come to me to lend a voice. Meanwhile, you are now praising the same Sahara Reporters for covering the wahala in your school. Have you forgotten that me wey you call your honorary Papa, I am only interested in the fact of theft and not the politics of theft? Is that not what I preach? Do I not say that I am not interested in the ethnicity, the religion, or the party identity of theft? You think that your interest in the politics of theft all day has escaped me? I’ve been using the corner of one eye to read what you have been posting in defense of your oppressor today.
But, Prof, I was just separating issues.
Me, I am putting issues together and I am also gauging your priorities. You come to me about the school fees yawa in your school after hours in social media trenches fighting another woman’s dollar battles with the Nigerian state. The way I see it, if you don’t mind losing $175 million to our former first lady, why are you grumbling about a minimal increase in your school fees? In fact, I expect you to help your parents out by letting them know that you can now afford to sponsor your own education. Do they know how many hours of your life you have spent defending the wife of a Nigerian politician today? Do you think there is a connection between theft of public funds and why you are paying higher fees and your school is dilapidated?
But Prof, it is not like that now.
My friend, shut up. It is like that for me. Any member of your generation that I mentor personally and call my own – and I have lots of you guys from every ethnicity, every faith, every party, every part of the Nigerian divide – will now have to be forced to see past partisan puerilities in the context of corruption in Nigeria. We will enter the same trouser till you get your priorities right. Shey e ni e loro gbo ni. Enu e la wa yi.