Unethical election campaigns in Nnamdi Azikiwe University

By Okechukwu Nwafor

Recently the Nnamdi Azikiwe University issued a memo cancelling the scheduled Deanship election in the Faculty of Education citing “some irregularities and unethical conduct” that trailed the campaigns.

The memo, which is in public domain, demands our objective interrogation.

Many would agree that this memo is an unprecedented administrative move aiming to reposition Unizik from the aberrant to the normal.

Indeed, the memo problematizes the inherent systemic eccentricity in Unizik election campaigns that re-echo what Adebayo Williams once described as “normalization of the abnormal.” In this fashionable coinage, the Igbos would argue that once an evil act survives one calender year, it transforms into a tradition. The memo adds an audacious momentum to the tempo of administrative forthrightness. It sends a warning signal.

Undeterred political behemoths who felt that their torsos are too weighty to be contained will suddenly hesitate. The memo is an administrative uppercut that broke the jaw of impunity. It is a timely administrative blitz that scattered the assembly of political marauders and desperadoes.

First of all let us address the issue of election campaigns in Unizik. It has always followed a familiar pattern: once one starts receiving goodwill messages from those who had been hitherto hidden in obscure spaces, then one suspects that contestsnts are warming up. It has become predictably pedestrian to read the future of Unizik elections. It is as simple as ABC to know when Deanship and Council elections are imminent. When you receive a very warm and affectionate sms from someone who doesn’t know you then you understand the change in the political climate. This has become the usual rhetorical political climate change we all know: one that is heralded by goodwill sms.

How does this relate to what is happening in the larger Nigerian society? What distinguishes the Ivory Tower from the survival-of-the-fittest syndrome that afflicts the Nigerian state?

In Nigeria, we see similar trend of awkward, formulaic modus operandi in election campaigns. Once elections near every politician in Nigeria becomes a philanthropist. They suddenly realize that poverty-stricken individuals abound in our society. They become willing donors to laudable projects in their communities, states and elsewhere. They institute contigent foundations that address Mickey Mouse projects. Do we reinvent such scenarios in our institution? I think, in its sagacity to muffle the dangerous echoes of the Nigerian political style reverberating in our institution, the University management issued this memo. It is a memo that simply states that Unizik is not the larger Nigerian society. Indeed, Unizik is an Ivory Tower where the credo of civility, order, intelligence, and intellectualism must be maintained at all times. The management says: Unizik is not a motor park while its staff are not motor park Agberos.